


Love and Lose (and Love Again)

by Dragonheart37



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: 100 percent self-indulgent and im not sorry, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Literally Every Character Is Queer And This Was Unintentional, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, Physical Abuse, Slavery, not even fade-to-black, occasional allusions to sex but nothing's ever more than alluded to, revenge is eventually had on the aforementioned abuser, this is basically just original fiction set in the Star Wars universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2020-11-26 22:34:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20937848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonheart37/pseuds/Dragonheart37
Summary: Essentially original fiction set in the Star Wars universe. Set in the Old Republic era (~3,600 years before the movies' timeline).Jedi and Sith are sworn enemies, and these two are no different - worse than many, even, each the other's personal nemesis. That changes when Sith lord Ayeir Acheron pretends to betray her Empire in order to gain the trust of Jedi knight Samte Starweaver. The problems start when Ayeir realizes she's no longer entirely pretending, and they truly have become friends... and then something else. A Sith and a Jedi falling in love would be catastrophic at the best of times, but now they're on opposite sides of a rapidly oncoming war while trying to balance an illicit, under-the-table relationship, and soon enough the choices they have to make grow more and more difficult. One thing they will certainly learn: Nothing can last forever.





	1. Prologue

“I doubt our hosts will like you being up on their roof.”

Samte turned at the voice behind her, flushing with embarrassment. “Sorry, Master Shiir.”

Master Shiir chuckled, padding over to sit cross-legged beside her. “I'm sure they'll forgive you. You seem to have made quite the good impression on them.”

She sobered at that, turning back to stare over the valley again. It was, by all accounts, a beautiful day – early morning sunlight filtering through the mountains behind them to paint the opposite side of the valley in pale rose, wild birds singing in the trees, white clouds scudding across a lavender sky. Most of the colony village hadn't yet awoken, or else were still in their houses, leaving the scene still and peaceful. These wild Rim planets were some of Samte's favorites, for their beauty. Samte couldn't bring herself to enjoy this particular sunrise like usual.

“Your mind is troubled.”

Samte looked down at the thatch roof beneath them. “I can't stop thinking about...”

Master Shiir made a soft sound of understanding. “It wasn't your fault,” he said gently.

“I know,” Samte replied, but her heart wasn't in it.

Master Shiir sighed, his thoughts darkening a shade despite his words. She glanced up at him, surprised to see the same melancholy reflected in his eyes. “It's a lesson all Jedi have to learn eventually. But you shouldn't have had to face it so young. With the times being what they are...” He shook his head.

Samte's brow furrowed. “Lesson, Master?”

A wan smile touched his lips. “Most things are, or at least can be. I meant what I said, Samte. What happened to the colonists wasn't your fault.”

She gritted her teeth, the memory of a pirate's cruel smile and the _zzzt!_ of blaster bolts flashing through her mind. She dug her fingers into the thatch. “We should have been able to stop it. We're _Jedi._”

“We're still only Human,” Master Shiir reminded her. “We are called to a great purpose, given great power. But even we can't save everyone.” When she didn't respond, he rested a thin hand on her shoulder. “You saved many people yesterday, Padawan. If it weren't for you, the losses would have been far greater. Don't become so focused on your failures that you overlook your successes.”

“I... yes, Master,” she murmured. He tilted his head, inviting a continuation. “You're right. I know you are. But I can't help feeling... feeling like I should have been able to do more. If I'd just been faster, or if I'd done something different -” She closed her eyes, trying to center herself. _There is no emotion, there is peace._

Master Shiir rubbed her shoulder. “I understand, Samte. It's... a difficult truth to face. But we must face it nonetheless. We cannot save everyone.”

She looked up at him, searching his face. “But we have to try. Right?”

He smiled sadly and ruffled her hair. “Oh, little Starweaver. I expect you'll always _try,_ no matter what I or anyone else tell you. So long as you don't destroy yourself in the process, yes. We have to try.”

* * *

Ayeir turned just in time to see a flash of metal before the right side of her face exploded in pain. She screamed, staggering, the entire right side of her head blazing with agony.

The Force twisted under the surge of fear and pain, and it was like a bomb had gone off on top of her. Everything within ten feet – barricades, bodies, survivors – went flying, thrown away from her by the blast of Force. She was only dimly aware of the screams and cracking of bones, pulse pounding in her ears. She reached up gingerly to touch her face, her _eye_ – she couldn't see out of it, and that wasn't just blood running into it. For a split second, she stood trying to understand what had just happened.

It occurred to her very suddenly that if someone could get lucky enough to wound her like this, they could almost certainly get lucky enough to kill her. Ayeir had never been afraid on the battlefield, but that thought was terrifying.

_No,_ she thought, digging her claws into that fear and anchoring herself in it, letting it turn to fury. _I will not die here!_

Even injured, it was easy to launch herself inhumanly far forward, to pounce on the few survivors struggling to their feet and engage them again. Even injured, three swings of her lightsaber was all it took to finish them off.

She stood in the carnage for a few heartbeats, blood rushing in her ears, drowning out all else, until she was certain no one else was coming. Then, abruptly, her legs went weak and shaky, and she fell to her knees without quite meaning to, head spinning.

Hands touched her face, and she flinched before she recognized that presence in the Force, wine-red and softly singing to her without words or voice. “M-Master,” she croaked, voice shaking as much as the rest of her as Lord Sayin tilted her chin up to look over the wound. “I'm – s-sorry, I'm sorry -”

“Hush,” Lord Sayin soothed, pressing her thumb to Ayeir's lips to shush her. “Save your strength. You've lost a lot of blood.” Relief flowed through Ayeir for a heartbeat before Lord Sayin continued coolly, “You can apologize later. Assuming you're not too weak to survive, that is.”

_I'm sorry,_ Ayeir wanted to repeat, but even if she hadn't been ordered to be silent she probably couldn't have gotten the words out anyway. Her vision was going bright and fuzzy, and she could barely even hear Lord Sayin's words by the end of the sentence. _I'm sorry. I'm strong, I'll be strong for you. I'm not weak. I'm _not_ weak!_

Then she was gone.

When she awoke, she was lying on her back on a flat, hard surface. The smell of antiseptic filled her nose, familiar and loathed. Around her she could hear the beeping of monitors, the clicking of datapads and feet on the floor. Medbay.

A moment later her Force-sense came back to her, and she winced as her mind flooded with blazing light behind her eyelids, a hundred living beings all shining in the Force and making her head spin with a thousand thoughts and hopes and fears and emotions. She groped for her shields, finding them missing entirely, and struggled to focus enough to weave the Force around her mind until the presence of a hundred beings was more tolerable.

Only then could she focus enough to recognize the one Force-presence outshining all others, directly to her left. She forced her eyes open – no, _eye_, only the left would comply – and looked up at her master.

Lord Sayin wasn't looking at her at that moment, for which Ayeir was actually somewhat grateful. Instead her yellow eyes were focused over Ayeir's head at something on her other side – probably the doctor Ayeir could feel there, though she didn't turn her head to see him. Her face displayed little emotion, impassive as a marble statue, but her Force-presence rang faintly of disappointment. It made Ayeir want to curl up in a little ball and disappear.

Lord Sayin looked down at her. “You're awake,” she noted.

Ayeir tried to speak and broke down coughing, which made pain sear through her face. She gasped for breath, and felt more than heard the doctor approach on her other side, though he didn't touch her, waiting for Lord Sayin's permission.

As Ayeir caught the breath she'd lost in the spike of pain, Lord Sayin spoke, unruffled. “You let a Force-deaf person get close enough to critically injure you. Perhaps to kill you, if he had been a bit quicker.”

Ayeir cleared her throat and tried again, this time managing a rasping sentence. “He got lucky.”

Lord Sayin narrowed her eyes, and Ayeir squirmed under the attention. “You were sloppy,” she said coldly. “Reckless and impatient. Like you _always_ are. I'm disappointed, Ayeir. I expected better from you.”

Ayeir couldn't completely suppress her cringe, shame coursing through her. “I'm sorry, Master,” she murmured, casting her working and uncovered eye downward. “I'll do better next time. It won't happen again.”

Lord Sayin sighed and waved a hand to the doctor, who took his cue to start doing something on the side of Ayeir's face she couldn't see. She wanted to bat his hand away, but fought the impulse. “The damage to the eye is extensive,” he said crisply, doing a very good job of sounding unaffected by the conversation he'd just heard. Doctoring Sith took nerves of steel, after all. “I was unable to repair the original structure, but the highest quality of cybernetics are available to replace it if authorization is given to order them. Other than that, there are no major injuries, just surface damage which is already healing.” Most doctors were unnerved at how fast Ayeir's body healed, aided by her talent with Force healing herself, but she knew this one, the head medic aboard Lord Sayin's battle cruiser. He'd treated her often enough to get over the particular quirks the Force had made with her biology. “The cybernetic implant surgery just requires authorization, my lord.”

Lord Sayin considered, and Ayeir tried to regulate her breathing. There wasn't even a question in her mind of whether she wanted it – besides just wanting her perfect vision back, cybernetic eyes could come with all kinds of extra enhancements that biological eyes could never have. If Lord Sayin was willing to pay, that was, because the decision wasn't really up to Ayeir anyway. It was Lord Sayin's medic and Lord Sayin's credits – and, for that matter, Lord Sayin's apprentice.

But it was only a few seconds before Lord Sayin nodded. “Then you have my authorization to order the highest-quality cybernetic eyes available, doctor. Spare no expense. We might as well make the best of it.”

Ayeir stifled a sigh of relief and gratitude. The doctor, however, paused, doubt flickering in his mind. “Just so I'm clear, my lord – eyes, plural?”

Ayeir's blood ran cold. She hadn't even noticed, but Lord Sayin _had_ said that, hadn't she? “Yes,” Lord Sayin confirmed, voice crisp. “Many of the more advanced functions are all but useless with only one of the pair. I'm not wasting my credits on useless features.” She cast a cool glance at Ayeir. “Unless my apprentice has any objections?”

That wasn't a question, it was a test. Something in Ayeir hated the thought of losing her good eye for such a petty reason, but it wasn't _up_ to Ayeir, and they both knew it. Ayeir hesitated only an instant before dipping her head, murmuring, “No, master. It is as you say.”

A thread of pleasure wound around Lord Sayin's Force-presence, and Ayeir relaxed a little. If Lord Sayin was pleased, Ayeir was safe, at least for the moment.

Ayeir tilted her head this way and that, admiring her new eyes in the mirror. She was still getting used to their more advanced functions, and had found that most of them gave her a headache if used too often or too long, but even with the extra tech turned off her perfect vision had been restored. Lord Sayin really had meant it when she said _spare no expense_; anyone looking at her from more than a few centimeters away would never know these eyes were cybernetic. They were nearly perfect mimics of the organic originals, complete with working tear ducts. Except, of course, the color.

Ayeir had gotten that choice, when the medic ordered these eyes for her. She had almost just chosen to keep her original bright hazel. But something bothered her about the idea that her eyes would never turn the bright yellow that was a hallmark of dark side power, that they would stay this boring, mundane color forever if she let them.

Scarlet eyes, on the other hand. Scarlet eyes made a statement. Scarlet eyes stood out even among Sith, at least among humans, and they would unnerve her enemies as much as Sith yellow would. Perhaps more so, she mused, admiring the way the color glittered in the light when she turned her head.

And, anyway, Lord Sayin didn't care. Ayeir had hoped for her approval, but she would accept neutrality.

Ayeir grinned at herself in the mirror, deliberately slow and menacing, and couldn't deny the effect. Yes, these eyes would do just fine.

* * *

Jedi didn't often celebrate things, but Samte found no shame in sneaking out of the Temple with a few of her old clanmates to celebrate her knighting in a Coruscant cantina.

(Well. _Sneaking out_ was a strong word. It wasn't like she wasn't _allowed_ to go out without permission from her superiors now. But she did happen to know that several of her compatriots weren't really supposed to be out on the town, and she'd conveniently forgotten that fact tonight.)

In street clothes, the only things that would signal them as Jedi to anyone else were the lightsabers on their belts, and those were relatively inconspicuous in an upscale cantina where people weren't actively looking for weapons. So they ordered good food and bad drinks and took over a booth in the corner, where a half dozen padawans and one new knight could sit and talk and laugh together without being noticed too much.

“I _still_ can't believe you got knighted this early,” a Togruta a year older than Samte groaned, flopping back against the booth seat with comically overexaggerated despair.

“I can,” a Pantoran girl laughed. “She's been the prize of the Temple since she was five years old, and showing us up ever since.” She grinned at Samte to soften the teasing, gold eyes sparkling.

“That's exactly what I mean, Rev,” the Togruta complained, but they were grinning too. “When will the rest of us get a break?”  
“It's not _my_ fault Master Shiir picked me up,” Samte defended herself, flicking a fry across the table at them.

“Aw, let up on her,” another Human told them, slinging his arm over Samte's shoulders. “We should be proud of her!”

Samte laughed a little, trying to ignore the heat rising in her cheeks. “Ramon -”

“Oh, don't deny it! Eighteen years old and a knight already? You're the youngest knight the Order's seen in three generations,” he reminded her, smile bright. “You've made us _all_ proud today.”

“Ramon's right,” the Mirialan sitting across the table agreed. “You deserve this, Samte.”

Samte smiled. “Thanks, Essir. And you, Ramon.”

The Togruta padawan opened their mouth to say something, but their eyes widened before they could speak. Samte felt the silvery aura of her master's Force-presence a heartbeat before he spoke. “Did I miss my invitation?”

Everyone spun in their seats to face Master Shiir, alarm sparking through the group like electricity. “Master Shiir!” the Togruta started. “We were just -”

He raised a hand. “Peace, Cashatt. I'm not here to bring you back to the Temple. As far as I'm concerned, you all have the express permission of your masters to be here celebrating your clanmate's knighting.” He arched an eyebrow, green eyes sparkling with amusement, and Cashatt and Rev both smiled nervously and looked down at their plates. “I'm just here to congratulate my old padawan.”

Samte stood to embrace him. “Thank you,” she murmured in his ear. “For everything. I don't know where I'd be without you.”

“Maybe not the youngest Jedi knight in the last three generations,” he said, pulling back so she could see the twinkle in his eye. “But probably doing almost as well.” He patted her on the back. “I'm proud of you, Samte. You'll shake the stars someday.”

She flushed again, trying to remind herself not to be too enamored by the praise. “Thank you, M- Amaron?”

He nodded at the use of his first name, confirming that yes, it was okay, and added, “I'll be on my way. I don't intend to hold up your festivities. Go on, have your night. I'm sure the Council will have an assignment for you in the morning.”

She sat down again as Master- as _Amaron_ walked away into the crowd. Immediately Ramon pulled her back into a side hug, looping his arm over her shoulders and apparently not noticing the small, flustered squeak that escaped her. “You heard the man, let's celebrate!”

* * *

Ayeir's seventeenth birthday was a special one, the day she was allowed to legally own property, and Lord Sayin allowed her a larger celebration than most years accordingly, claiming it would be good practice for dealing with other Sith at social events. She even presented Ayeir with a gift: a Twi'lek slave, the first Ayeir would be allowed to own herself.

“She's served me well,” Lord Sayin said as Ayeir examined the woman. She offered Ayeir the chip that would hold the slave's documentation, as well as the capacity to lock and unlock the collar or activate its shock electrodes. “And now she's yours, to do with as you please.”

The Twi'lek woman's lekku flicked nervously at that, but she kept impressive control over her face, violet eyes downturned. They made a nice contrast against her spring green skin, the darker green dapples across her lekku, shoulders, and back left visible by the soft turquoise, gauzy top. Though her lekku trembled slightly when Ayeir drew close, betraying her nerves, she didn't flinch away, but stood quietly under the inspection. “She's perfect,” Ayeir decided, turning back to her master and bowing at the waist. “Thank you, Master.”

Lord Sayin chuckled at her grin as she straightened, and the genuine good humor sparkling in Ayeir's Force-sense eased the last thread of tension in her. “You're welcome. I hope she pleases you. But you have other guests to attend to.”

The party lasted well into the night, and Ayeir spent most of it drinking and laughing, everyone in a surprisingly good mood, trading stories of great battles and glorious victories. When at last she retired to her rooms, after the guests had gone, the slave accompanied her.

As she kicked off her boots and opened her wardrobe, she felt more than heard the Twi'lek shift behind her. “What does my master wish of me?” she dared to ask softly, the first she'd spoken all night.

Ayeir turned to look at her and hesitated for a moment. The woman stood a few paces away, hands clasped behind her back and eyes still downcast as she waited for a command.

Ayeir had not been lying – she _was_ lovely to look at, even by Twi'lek standards. Ayeir knew what was expected of her – by Lord Sayin, by this slave, by society in general.

And yet suddenly the withdrawn stance, the fear in her curled-under lekku at that expectation, raised a sour taste in Ayeir's mouth.

She reached into the wardrobe and pulled out a spare robe, tossing it at the slave. She caught it with fumbling hands, jerking in surprise, and stared down at the dark, soft fabric for a moment. “Put that on,” Ayeir sighed. The Twi'lek looked up, uncertain and confused, and Ayeir paused in pulling her own outer robes off. “You're a beautiful woman,” she said softly, “and I know what masters expect from beautiful Twi'lek women. But I will never ask that of you.” She nodded to the robe in the Twi'lek's hands. “You'll be cold, come night. I'll deal with getting you a side room that can be heated more tomorrow. For tonight, just take the robe.”

She turned away to pull her undershirt over her head, pulling a nightshirt out before she'd even removed her bra when she felt the Twi'lek tense behind her and pointedly ignoring the slave. A moment later she heard the soft rustle of fabric as the woman pulled on the robe she'd been given.

When she'd finished changing, Ayeir turned to look at the Twi'lek again. She was still standing where she'd been left, hugging the soft black robe tight around herself. Her face stayed impassive – _she really is well-trained,_ Ayeir thought – but Ayeir, unlike most masters, could read the nervous words she was signing to herself with subtle twists and curls of her lekku. “What are you called?” she asked, pretending she hadn't seen – better to keep that card up her sleeve, for now.

“Achi Ilvedra, my master.”

Ayeir sat down to pull off her socks, turning the words over to fit them together in a way that would change the meaning to something reasonable in Ryl. “Achil'vedra?” The Twi'lek startled, eyes widening in surprise, and Ayeir smiled crookedly. “I know enough about Twi'leks to know the split form isn't natural to you.”

Achil'vedra pulled the robe a little tighter around herself, lekku edging toward each other in discomfort. “As you say, my master,” she agreed softly.

“You may use the Ryl form, if you prefer. It makes no difference to me.” Achil'vedra nodded slowly. Ayeir gestured to the sofa just outside, in the main chamber. “I wasn't expecting to be given a slave tonight, or I would have had a room prepared. For tonight, you can stay on the couch.”

“Thank you, my master,” Achil'vedra murmured, and disappeared into the main chamber when Ayeir flicked her wrist to dismiss her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the hyperfixation I've been stuck on for the last several months! I have a lot of this written, but there are also a lot of chunks in the middle I still need to write because I haven't written it all in chronological order, so updates will probably be fairly sporadic. (Comments are the best motivation!)
> 
> This first chapter is essentially all prologue/scene-setting for the actual plot, introducing the first set of major players and hopefully giving an idea of how Ayeir and Samte each grew up. It's not the most interesting part of the story, but I do want to post stuff in chronological order, so there you go.
> 
> (The whole "one of your protagonists is a slaveowner" thing will be addressed directly in later chapters, I promise. Sith culture is Yikes on a lot of levels; that's one of them.)
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	2. Encounters (Or, In Which Our Heroines Meet And Promptly Try To Kill Each Other)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes star-crossed lovers are star-crossed by fate alone. Sometimes the lovers themselves do the star-crossing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Name pronunciations of characters that have appeared so far, because someone brought it to my attention that I should post those at some point:
> 
> Ayeir Acheron - ai-YEER' AA'-kur-on  
Samte Starweaver - SAHM'-tay (exactly how you think)  
Amaron Shiir - AA'-muh-ron SHEER  
Renata Sayin - reh-NAH'-tah SAY-in  
Achil'vedra (Achi Ilvedra) - AH'-kil-VEH'-drah (AH'-kee il-VEH'-drah)

They met for the first time on a battlefield.

Samte pushed through the lines of Republic soldiers, some panicked and trying to flee, most standing their ground despite the enemy they were facing. They let her through, relief flashing through their minds in the Force – _a Jedi, thank the Force, we're saved._

She made it past their lines and out into the open, a circle of space littered with corpses. In the center stood a Human woman, tall and broad and well-muscled. The dark robes and crimson lightsaber burning in her hand would have marked her as Sith even if her free hand hadn't been raised toward a Republic soldier who hung in midair, clutching at his throat and kicking helplessly in the air.

Samte ignited her own twin lightsabers, safely out of the crowd, and the _snap-hiss_ of the blue blades drew the Sith's attention. Her eyes were inhuman scarlet, standing out sharply against her pale skin and white-blonde hair. “This has gone far enough,” Samte said, projecting her voice without shouting and raising her lightsabers to the ready. “Put him down.”

The Sith grinned, slow and malicious, baring perfect white teeth. “If you insist,” she purred, and flicked her wrist. The soldier she'd been Force choking went flying, and struck a nearby barricade with a sickening crack before falling limp to the ground. Samte suppressed a wince, and the Sith's grin widened a fraction. “So, _you're_ the Jedi who's supposed to be protecting this battalion,” she mused, taking a few strides forward and rolling her lightsaber wrist idly. “Finally! A real challenge.”

“This doesn't need to end in violence,” Samte told her, though she didn't drop her ready stance. “Your forces are defeated. Surrender and you'll be treated fairly.”

The Sith laughed, shoulders shaking. She made no attempt to hide her emotions in the Force, and that somehow made it _more_ unnerving – she genuinely found that proposition _funny;_ her humor sparked against Samte's senses. “What fun would that be?” she asked, eyes glittering. She paused, tilting her head in an inquisitive, almost childish gesture. “You're really not afraid of me, are you?” she asked, then grinned that dangerous grin again. “Pity. We'll have to fix that.”

Before Samte could reply, the Sith launched herself forward with a burst of Force, and Samte braced herself to meet the lunge.

The Sith hit her like a freight train. Their lightsabers threw sparks with the force of the blow, hissing with each ensuing strike. Samte had fought Sith before, on battlefields like this one.

This was different.

_This_ Sith hit harder, moved faster, bent the Force with her very _presence_ like a planet creating a gravity well. Every strike challenged Samte's ability to hold her ground. The Sith attacked and attacked and attacked, hardly pausing to block. Samte had to dance back, skirting around her and searching for any opening she could find.

But she _did_ hold her ground. She adjusted swiftly to this reckless, furious style, using the versatility dual-wielding lent her to exploit every opening the Sith left her – and there were more than first appeared. Her off-hand saber seared a smoking line across the Sith's ribs when she'd expected the obvious strike to be blocked, and in her surprise her own defense slipped. The Sith roared in fury, and pain seared in Samte's shoulder.

She fell back, but the Sith gave her no reprieve, following Samte ruthlessly even though she had to be in agony herself. Samte staggered, and a heartbeat later the Force twisted, wrenching her main-hand saber from her grip and throwing it a dozen meters. The blade winked out, and Samte gritted her teeth, resorting to a two-handed grip on an off-hand saber that was _not_ designed for that.

The Sith was grinning again, all teeth and wildfire fury.

_Think. Think fast, Starweaver._

She jumped back again, letting her main hand drop as if the wound in her shoulder pained her too much to continue using it. The Sith snarled in triumph and made to lunge after her for the kill.

Her feet never left the ground. Samte twisted, Force surging around her, and used it to fling a shard of rubble from one of the crashed ships nearby into the Sith's gut before she could react to the change of tactics. She _screamed_ and doubled forward, her voice accompanied by a thunderclap of Force that Samte just managed to brace against.

For a moment, as she called her lost saber back to her hand, Samte thought she might attack again anyway. The Sith snarled wordless rage at her, scarlet eyes piercing.

And then she fell to her knees and crumpled, mind going dark and still in the Force.

Samte approached hesitantly anyway, wary of a trick, but prodding the Sith's Force-presence revealed it was no trick. There was barely any resistance to her intrusion, and the mind within was dark, quiet. Not unconscious, not yet, but close.

She scanned the field around them, but she'd been right after all – the Imperial forces were already on the run, and apparently none of them intended to come back for their fallen Sith lord.

She knelt beside the wounded Sith lord and rolled her onto her back, sucking in air through her teeth. She'd intended to stun her enemy, give herself time to get her lightsaber back and maybe, _maybe_ get the jump on her. Grabbing a very _sharp_ shard of metal, which was now embedded in the Sith's gut, had been sheer dumb luck.

The Sith hissed, startling Samte back to her feet, and tried to strike out with Force alone; Samte blocked it with a thought and pushed hard at her mind. “Sleep,” she commanded, though she didn't really expect that to work, and when it didn't, she called on the Force to pin the Sith down and went for the sedative she carried with her instead. “We'll do this the hard way, then.”

The Sith bared her teeth and spat what Samte thought was a curse in the old Sith tongue at her, but she was bleeding out and probably mortally wounded if she didn't get medical attention soon enough. That was enough to weaken her so she couldn't fight hard enough to get free before she succumbed to the sedative.

* * *

When Ayeir awoke, her head was fuzzy and it took her a moment to even realize she was on the floor of a cage.

Or, more precisely, an energy cage. She stood up slowly, shaking the tremors out of her muscles. There was cotton in her head – drugs, she could feel a sedative of some kind coursing through her system. She could also feel her system fighting to repel it, weaving the Force through her bloodstream and her very cells to purge the drug from her body.

“You woke up fast.”

Ayeir turned and found the Jedi standing there, arms crossed and watching her as she shook the fuzziness off. She was a good head shorter than Ayeir – most Humans were – but her blue eyes still sparkled with a ferocity Ayeir could almost admire. Ayeir reached up and tapped the roof of the energy cage, just barely able to reach it with her fingertips when she stretched. “Didn't think you Jedi had much use for these,” she said, smirking. “Isn't your good nature enough to keep your prisoners docile?”

“We don't, usually,” the Jedi agreed, neatly ignoring the jab. “It's so rare that we manage to capture an unwilling Sith, after all.”

Ayeir shielded her prickle of irritation in the Force and projected only her amusement and confidence instead, grinning at the Jedi. “Don't expect it to last too long. If I had a credit for every time I've been told something or someone was 'made to defeat Sith' minutes before I destroyed it, I would be richer than any Hutt in the galaxy.”

“I expect that's true, in your line of work,” the Jedi agreed, arching an eyebrow. Some idle part of Ayeir's mind wondered if her hair actually grew that golden blonde naturally, or if she took the time to dye her eyebrows as well. It _looked_ natural, but she'd never seen that shade of gold hair from a dark-skinned Human. “We ran your scans in the databanks while you were out,” the Jedi continued. “You're Lord Ayeir Acheron, an up-and-coming apprentice of Lord Renata Sayin. You've killed a lot of our people.”

Ayeir grinned mockingly and half-bowed with a flourish. “You have me at a disadvantage, Jedi. You know who I am, but I don't know you.”

The Jedi didn't smile, but Ayeir didn't expect her to. Only cool Jedi calm radiated from her in the Force, golden and soft, without even a flicker of emotion-color here or there to give Ayeir a clue as to her feelings. She was skilled at shielding, even for a Jedi. After a moment, she conceded. “I am Samte Starweaver, a Knight of the Jedi Order.”

Ayeir snorted. “_Starweaver_? The hell kind of name is that? Surprised it doesn't come along with a fancy title.” She smirked. “Then again, 'Killer of Sith' doesn't have quite the same ring to it as 'Killer of Jedi,' does it?”

There it was – a flash of crimson anger, so fast Ayeir almost missed it before it vanished back into the gold of Starweaver's Force signature. Ayeir let her smirk widen, let the Jedi know she'd sensed it, and Starweaver's eyes narrowed a fraction. _Even the best denial is still denial._ “You're not going to get answers from me, you know,” Ayeir told her, rolling her shoulders with deliberate casualness.

Starweaver raised her chin, calm and unfazed again. “We'll see.”

Ayeir was far too strong for Jedi mind tricks, of course, and both of them knew Starweaver had been bluffing when she said it. It took Ayeir all of twelve days to figure out how to pop the mechanism in the base of the energy cage without it sending her Force powers back at her twofold, though she was nursing electrical burns and numerous bruises by the time she finally managed it. Finding her lightsaber was a trifle after that, and she tore her way out of the Republic base in fury and blood.

Starweaver wasn't present at the time, off on some mission or other and unavailable to try to stop Ayeir. Ayeir was almost disappointed. She would have liked to see the look on the Jedi's face.

* * *

They met again, a dogfight in the black of space.

Samte gritted her teeth, pulling the Phoenix around as tight as it would turn as shots flew bright green overhead. Amaron's voice crackled over the headset. “Samte, where are you?”

“I've got someone on my tail,” she replied, trying and failing to sound calm. Her ship shuddered under a barrage of bolts, and Samte forced herself to ease her grip on the controls. _Peace. Serenity. Let the Force flow through you._

The Force informed her of one very important thing as she found a breath's worth of peace under the harrying assault of the interceptor tailing her, and she bit back a curse. “It's a Sith. There's a Sith on me.”

“Are you sure?”

“No Force-deaf has a presence that -”

The Phoenix jolted hard underneath her, alarms blaring from somewhere in the cockpit, and Samte _did_ curse this time as her ship failed to comply when she tried to bank away this time. “I'm hit,” she snapped into the headset. “I need you, Amaron!”

“I'm coming!” He was too far away; she knew it by the fact that his mind was only a dim flicker in her Force-sense. He had the whole of the fleet of freighters they were escorting to cross, never mind the Imperial ships swarming them. He would never make it in time.

A savage pulse of victory reached her from the Sith still hounding her ship, and Samte took a breath, mind racing. “I'm going into atmosphere,” she told Amaron. “I might be able to lose them in the mountains.”

Not likely, she knew. An interceptor like that had a lot more maneuverability than her light corvette, especially given that some of her steering capacity had just gone out the window. But there was one thing on her side. The planet below them was beautiful, crystalline mountains jutting through a dense layer of blue-white fog. That fog, besides making visibility almost zero on most days, also had a tendency to black out most scanners. They'd both be relying on their Force-senses to navigate. If Samte could hide her Force-presence long enough, she _might_ be able to escape her pursuer – or at least, she might be able to buy Amaron enough time to join their fight. Assuming he wasn't engaged by another enemy before he got there.

It was a lot of _mights_ for a plan to save her life, but it was all she had.

“Be careful, Samte,” Amaron warned, probably thinking along the same lines as her.

“Be _fast,_” Samte urged him. “I can't lose them forever. I'm going down.”

A prickle ran up the back of her neck, and she took the Phoenix into a nosedive a split second before the next volley of shots flew past. The interceptor followed her into atmosphere without even a moment's hesitation.

Her scanners went dark just as she dove into the dense layer of clouds, and she breathed deep and reached out in the Force. The race was on.

_Left. Right. Skate over a ridge, almost scrape the belly of the ship. Roll to the side. Hear the ship groan in complaint; it won't take another maneuver that steep. Left. Carefully. Under a stone arch. Right. Bank hard -_

Samte shrieked as the ship scraped a cliff its ruined stabilizers couldn't manage the turn around, jolting her forward into her harness so hard the straps cut into her torso. She fought for control, but it was a losing battle – the Phoenix canted to the side, slid down the stone slope with a grating scream of metal on splintering crystal. She called to the Force instinctively, and it responded, wrapping around her just in time for the Phoenix to collide with the wall of crystal it was rapidly sliding toward with a deafening crash.

It took her a moment to get her bearings, even with the shield she'd thrown up protecting her from the worst of the collision. Her ears were ringing; if there was anything to be heard, she wasn't going to hear it until it was right on top of her. Something wet ran down her temple and cheek. It wasn't until she touched her fingers to the spot and they came away stained red that she realized she was bleeding. Her chest hurt too; her harness had kept her from being thrown into the windshield, but she was going to have nasty bruises tomorrow.

She managed to reach the release and gasped when the straps released her, pain lancing like fire through her chest. _Might have broken a rib, too._

None of that would matter if that Sith found her here. She gritted her teeth and swung out of her seat, picking her way across the cockpit. _Is the dizziness just because the floor is tilted, or do I have a concussion? Probably both._

She had to Force-kick the door to get it open, some mechanism inside ruined in the crash, and dropped to the crystal slope outside, nearly slipping before she found her footing. A heartbeat too late, she felt another mind in the Force, and froze as crimson light erupted at her throat.

Her ears were still ringing, but she didn't need to hear. The Sith at the other end of the lightsaber was one she knew, a head taller than her with crimson eyes that glittered with satisfaction as she forced Samte's chin up with the tip of her blade. She said something Samte couldn't hear, a cruel smile touching her lips, and Samte just narrowed her eyes, watching both her face and Force-presence.

Irritation flickered across both in response to her silence. Samte winced as the lightsaber pressed closer, heat growing from uncomfortable to outright painful, and raised a hand slowly to gesture to one ear. “The crash,” she said, her own voice strangely muffled inside her head. Lord Ayeir bared her teeth in what was probably a hiss of frustration and gestured with her free hand instead, pointing back toward her ship, which Samte could now see perched precariously on a crystalline ledge barely wide enough for it.

Samte sighed, but obeyed, moving slowly and carefully across the strange surface of the crystal mountain. Lord Ayeir's lightsaber never left her throat, but she didn't seem inclined to rush Samte either, apparently accepting the slick footing and possible head trauma as a legitimate reason.

_Any time now, Amaron,_ Samte thought, careful to keep her shields close around her mind.

But what would he have been able to do, anyway? Even if he had been there, attacking Lord Ayeir would have put Samte directly at risk. And he wasn't. So she boarded the interceptor, and allowed herself to be bound with stun cuffs. The ringing in her ears was starting to fade, at least enough that she could dimly hear the ship's engines start over it. By the time they reached whatever Imperial planet Lord Ayeir was stopping at, she could hear well enough to hear Lord Ayeir hiss threats into her ear with the emitter of her lightsaber pressed against Samte's back.

By the time she slipped away and managed to stow away on a freighter long enough to get word to Amaron, her hearing was back almost entirely. “Lucky thing, that,” she remarked to him later, as lightly as she could while nursing electrical burns from Force-lightning. “Surgery to repair deafness is expensive.”

He scoffed and ruffled her hair. “You never cease to amaze me, little Starweaver.”

* * *

They met again, a clash of sabers in the middle of a battlefield, each delaying the other and neither getting a decisive victory. Ayeir screamed fire and fury, frustration at this insufferable Jedi who refused to even flinch, who kept escaping her. Using that frustration to hide her fear at what Darth Sayin might do to her if she failed again was a matter of habit by now. (It was not as bad as she had feared, when she did fail – but then, her fears were very great indeed, and a few flesh wounds were not the worst of the possibilities.)

The Jedi called Starweaver remained unruffled through it all, impossibly calm and seemingly in control even when Ayeir knew she couldn't possibly be. Her strength was tremendous, even limiting herself to the light side as she did. Ayeir could almost -

She forced that down as soon as she even started to think it. Frustration was acceptable. Hatred was ideal. Admiration, on the other hand, was the farthest thing from acceptable. She did _not_ admire the Jedi.

* * *

They met again, the Sith drawling acidic humor from behind bars and Samte weathering it with all the patience her Jedi training afforded her. Separated only by an energy field, she could feel genuine amusement sparking off Lord Ayeir's thoughts, unguarded. She was _always_ unguarded, like she never felt the need to hide her emotions even from her enemies. Even as the dark side tainted her emotions with anger and hatred, she still displayed that genuine humor as she bantered with her Jedi captors.

If Samte bantered back, what of it? She felt no attachment to this Sith. She was entitled to a little wordplay to keep her mind sharp now and then. Lord Ayeir was clever, and her particularly blunt flavor of honesty was refreshing when she gave it.

It made her no less criminal, of course, but perhaps it was to be expected after so many clashes between them that a strange sort of familiarity would grow there. Samte was only Human, after all. And she certainly did not feel any fondness for the Sith.

* * *

Once, there was a strange twist on the almost habitual cycle.

Samte forced herself to be calm, quietly asking the Force to help her release her frustration as she was shoved down the hall. That wasn't particularly easy, with stun cuffs around her wrist and a collar clasped around her throat, but no one had ever said being a Jedi would be easy. The Zygerrian standing at the door they were approaching flattened his ears at their approach, hand creeping toward the electrowhip on his hip. “Another one?” he growled, startled. _Another?_

“Just shut up and open the door,” the slaver behind Samte snapped, and the guard winced and did as ordered.

It was dark inside the room, and Samte caught only a glimpse of a humanoid figure hunched in the middle of the room against a central pillar before she had to concentrate on not tripping and breaking her neck as she was shoved down the stairs. She looked up again, eyes starting to adjust as she hit the bottom, and at the same time the figure in question raised their head to look at her.

“Oh, you _must_ be joking,” Lord Ayeir groaned. “Not _you_.”

“Fancy meeting you here,” Samte quipped, trying to cover how shaken she was – _Lord Ayeir, here?_ – with humor. The Zygerrian growled and forced her down to her knees, unbinding the stun cuffs and binding her wrists to –

“Oh, _hell_ no,” Ayeir snarled, yanking at the bonds binding her to the pillar in a futile gesture of protest as Samte's wrists were bound to hers instead. “Not _her,_ you can't -”

She choked on her words, the buzz of a shock collar being activated nearly drowned out by her hiss of pain. She jerked at their shared bonds, yanking on Samte's shoulders maybe by accident, and Samte felt the pain of it spark off Ayeir in the Force.

“Don't presume to tell me what I can and can't do,” their apparently mutual captor sneered as she fell still again, her fury turning her Force-presence a murderous shade of black. Then they were alone in the near-total darkness.

Samte let there be a moment of fuming silence before she spoke, softly. “Well, we're in a bit of a pickle now, aren't we?”

“Shut _up,_ Je-”

The Sith broke off coughing, throat raw. Samte twisted as much as she could to see, but she couldn't get more than a glimpse out of the corner of her vision as Ayeir coughed and hacked. “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine, St-” Her voice broke and she coughed again, a little weaker this time.

“You don't sound fine.”

Ayeir made a strangled sound that was probably supposed to be threatening and yanked on her arms to wrench Samte's shoulders, definitely on purpose this time. “Ow,” Samte said mildly.

“I said I'm _fine,_ Starweaver,” Ayeir rasped, barely above a whisper now to spare her throat. After a moment she added grudgingly, “I think they turned up this damn collar again.”

Samte nodded, realized Ayeir couldn't see it, and instead tossed a quick projection of understanding into the Force for Ayeir to feel. Ayeir snorted in response, but said nothing. After a few seconds Samte stretched out her senses, exploring with the Force what she couldn't see in the physical darkness, searching for weaknesses or cracks in the stone, anything that might give them an edge. “You know, we should be able to pull this pillar out and get loose of it,” she offered. “We'd still be tied to each other, but that's somewhat more easily dealt with.”

“Oh, yes,” Ayeir said, with overexaggerated patience. The effect was somewhat ruined by the fact that she had to pause to cough again before continuing. “But this pillar is the main support for the whole room. Pull it out, and the entire thing comes down on top of us. I doubt even _we_ can hold up half a mountain's worth of stone.”

Samte considered that. “Probably not,” she ceded. “Of all the ways I thought today might go, I must admit this was not one of them.”

“Will you _please_ shut up and let me think?” Ayeir groaned, a soft _thump_ reaching Samte as she dropped her head back against the pillar between them. Samte gave her that, deciding it might not be wise to antagonize the Sith further, and worked instead on blocking out the waves of hot anger buffeting her in the Force. _This could complicate things._

The torture was decidedly the worst part of this whole endeavor.

Ayeir growled and started to rise, dragging Samte up with her, but her knees gave out as the Zygerrian called Ryjal raised the remote again and tripped the shock collar. A grating sound escaped her, something between a whine and a stifled scream, and Samte winced. “You'd do well to learn your place,” the Zygerrian warned, sounding utterly unruffled, and Ayeir didn't even have the energy to fight this time, just tightened the bonds between them ever so slightly as she tensed under the shock before falling limp, breath coming quick and shallow.

Samte couldn't stay silent any longer. “Stop it,” she pleaded. “You'll kill her.”

Ryjal's eyes narrowed, and he flicked a setting on the remote in his hand. A heartbeat later pain stabbed through her, paralyzing and burning in her muscles. She heard a scream, distantly, but it wasn't until the shock was over and her throat still ached that she realized it had been her own voice.

The Zygerrian bared sharp white teeth at her. “Beg for mercy,” he growled, “and perhaps I'll consider letting your punishment end there.”

Every fiber of her being rebelled against the thought of submitting to him, but Samte stifled the instinctive reaction. Ayeir couldn't take much more of this, and while the Sith might have almost deserved this, even she at least deserved a fair trial. Anyway, Samte wasn't sure how much more she could take either, and she needed to be conscious for this _stupid _plan to work.

So instead she bowed her head, letting the honest exhaustion and pain through to the surface without betraying anything else, and said with a rougher voice than was strictly necessary, “Please, have mercy... master.”

She could _feel_ his smug satisfaction radiating off him in the Force, even as he flicked the whip and watched her wince, then deactivated it and turned to go.

When he was gone and everything was dark, Samte tipped her head back against the pillar between them and just breathed, trying to find the calm and tranquility she'd been taught to value. _There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the Force._ The mantra helped a bit, so she kept repeating it silently, letting the familiar words soothe her emotions and physical pain alike.

Her silent chant was interrupted by Ayeir finally moving again, boots scraping against the stone floor as she painstakingly pulled herself back into a somewhat more comfortable position. A rasping, labored whisper reached Samte. “Explain... something to me... Jedi.”

Samte blinked into the darkness, not bothering to twist and try to see her. “What's that?”

“Why...” Ayeir paused, every word sounding like an effort. “Why would... you do that... for me?”

Samte sighed. _Good question._ “No one should be tortured like this,” she said quietly, her own voice trembling a bit. “Not even you.”

A low, ragged laugh bounced off the stone walls, and Samte felt Ayeir's arms shake with it. “I'll never understand you,” the Sith sighed hoarsely.

Samte didn't argue. Silence filled the air between them, filled only by painful breathing and the nearly inaudible hum of the stun cuffs binding them together.

At last, she spoke again, softly. “We're going to need to work together to get out of this, you know.”

Ayeir laughed again, a little stronger this time, though she was still hoarse. “That's what I keep trying to find a way out of... and not quite managing to.” She hissed softly, more a sigh than anything else, and added after a moment's thought, “If I could just get my hands on a lightsaber... or get off this pillar.”

Samte nodded. “The latter's more likely, I think.” She sighed heavily. “I have an idea. It's a _bad_ idea, but... it's an idea.”

“Any idea is better than no idea.”

“Force-sensitive slaves likely fetch a high price.”

“They do.”

“I'm... not going to ask why you know,” Samte muttered, half to herself. “My point is, they're looking to break us. Once they think one of us is broken, they'll be eager to sell.”

Silence. “You remember when I said any idea is better than no idea? This one might have proved me wrong.”

“Do you have a better one?”

More silence, and then a soft hiss of frustration that answered the question well enough. “You _can't _be serious, Starweaver.”

“Well, I can't come up with anything better, so if you can't either, this is all we've got.” She smiled crookedly. “Promise I'll come back for you. Jedi's honor.”

“Oh, well, _that_ makes it _all_ better,” Ayeir growled, and Samte couldn't help but laugh a little at the sarcasm.

* * *

Ayeir raised her head, blinking against the light for a moment as the door swung open. “Well,” she said, trying for smooth and not quite hitting the mark when her still-strained voice cracked. She tried to pretend it hadn't happened. “You actually came back. Or are you just here to finish me off?”

“I gave my word,” Samte – _Starweaver_ said simply. She ignited one of her lightsabers. “Now hold still so I can cut these stun cuffs.”

Ayeir obliged her, rolling her shoulders out when she was free and rising to her full height again. She caught her lightsaber when it was tossed to her and blinked in surprise. _She would give me my weapon back? Delusional trust indeed._

_ But you owe her,_ a small, nasty voice in the back of her head reminded her.

She shook it off with a stifled growl. _I don't owe her anything._

Aloud, she only growled, “I'm about ready to raise hell for these blasted aliens.” As she spoke, she raised her hand and clenched her fist, twisting the Force and cracking the shock collar off her neck with a deliberate _crunch_ of metal.

“Let's focus on getting off-planet first,” Starweaver – already free of her own restraints – suggested, shaking her head. Ayeir curled her lip, but had to admit the Jedi was right. They were both incredibly strong with the Force, but they were also ragged and exhausted, and they were going to have to steal a ship. _Blast._

She ignited her lightsaber, noticing but not responding to Starweaver suddenly tensing, and checked it over. The blade was steady, the hilt undamaged, and as she spun it once in her hand the balance still felt right. Ayeir extinguished the blade and jerked her chin toward the door, resisting the urge to wince as the motion stretched the reddened, blistered skin around her neck. “Let's get out of here, then. The sooner the better.”

Starweaver relaxed a fraction, and though her Force-presence had never betrayed nervousness or suspicion, Ayeir allowed herself a small smile at the motion. “For once, I couldn't agree with you more.”

Starweaver stopped in her tracks, scanning the high city wall they were moving along. Ayeir hissed under her breath. “We don't have _time,_ Jedi.”

The Jedi ignored her. She was frustratingly good at that. “There.”

“What?”

Ignored again. The Force coiled around Starweaver as she leaped up in a high arc to the top of the wall, vanishing over the edge. Ayeir scanned the area around them once, wondering if she should follow, but before she'd made up her mind the Jedi was already back, landing as softly from the four-meter drop as if she'd been stepping off a curb. She held out a holocomm and it lit up blue, a figure Ayeir didn't recognize forming in the light. “This is Starweaver, reporting in,” she said crisply.

“Samte,” the man sighed, openly relieved. “I was starting to worry.”

“What, about me?” Starweaver grinned, the first time Ayeir had seen her smile. She was almost pretty when she smiled. Ayeir brushed that thought away, glowering at the hologram. “No worries, Master. There was a complication, that's all. We're heading to the spaceport now.”

“We?”

“Me and the complication,” Starweaver said dryly, turning the holocomm in her hand until its sensor would be able to pick Ayeir up.

The Human man – _Master,_ Starweaver had called him, so perhaps her master Amaron Shiir, or perhaps not – grimaced. “Lord Ayeir. This is a surprise.”

“Likewise,” Ayeir growled. She paused, squinting at Starweaver. _The holocomm was already hidden there for her. Which means..._ “You planned this.”

“Most of it. Like I said, you were an unexpected complication.” She nodded to the holocomm, turning it back to face her. “I'll see you soon, Master.”

“Try not to die before I get there. May the Force be with you.”

“And with you.” She ended the call and clipped the holocomm back into place on her belt, looking up at Ayeir. “We should go.”

“I want an explanation, first,” Ayeir insisted, folding her arms across her chest. _Left in the dark again._

“Look, we can talk about it on the way to the spaceport. What little I'm allowed to tell you, anyway.” Starweaver turned and started off without waiting for a response, and after a moment Ayeir gritted her teeth and followed, lengthening her strides until she was walking beside the Jedi instead of following after her. Starweaver either didn't notice or, more likely, didn't care enough to comment. “The short version is, the Republic is cracking down on anti-slavery laws. The Jedi are helping. We needed inside information, me going in and letting myself get captured was one of the easier ways to get it.”

“You could have just interrogated the actual slaves,” Ayeir pointed out.

“Half of them are as scared of us as they are of the Zygerrians,” Starweaver sighed. “And most of them never had any training teaching them what to look for. A Jedi can resist the slavers _and_ knows what information to look for and remember.” She side-eyed Ayeir. “And you?”

Ayeir gritted her teeth and looked away, pretending to scan for threats again instead of meeting the Jedi's eyes. The truth was, it had been a stupid mistake – a number of stupid mistakes – that had landed her in a Zygerrian cell. She wasn't about to admit that to this Jedi. “That your master's ship?”

Starweaver let it drop, though Ayeir thought she felt a sparkle of amusement before it was shielded away again. “That's him. We should be able to – _ah!_”

Ayeir struck out with the Force the moment her back was turned, catching the Jedi off-guard and sending her tumbling across the docks. She rolled to one knee, wavering there as if she'd hit her head and couldn't yet stand, and Ayeir almost struck her down then.

But she was strong, strong enough to fight back. And if they started a drawn-out battle here, now, this whole endeavor would have been nothing but a waste of time and energy. Better to live another day and let the Jedi do the same than be killed here by the aliens closing in.

So by the time Starweaver had gotten to her feet, shaking off her shock, Ayeir was long gone, cutting down any being unfortunate enough to get in her path and boarding the nearest Zygerrian vessel she could steal.

_Another time, Starweaver. Another time._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: Most of this chapter didn't exist in the original version of this, before I intended to post it. It was one of those sections I skipped over intending to come back to it later (and then never did). As a result, most of this chapter is new writing! Whether you can tell the difference between the just-written and the months-old sections, you tell me.
> 
> I'll also just be honest with y'all in admitting that the entire Zygerrians incident was almost entirely because I'd just watched the Zygerria arc of Clone Wars before writing it and fell in love with that concept. I almost deleted it because of that, but it did have some plot importance, and it's also referenced in later chapters and I didn't feel like doing that much editing just to edit out my own self-indulgence, which was by the way the entire point of this fic in the first place. If that wasn't already obvious. :P


	3. Catch and Release (Or, In Which A Deception Begins)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **CHAPTER CONTENT WARNINGS: Force-choking, emotional and physical abuse, implied torture I guess**
> 
> Cycles have to break sometimes. Another player re-enters the scene, and Samte is too compassionate for her own good.

Samte sighed, a little exasperated despite her situation. “Aren't you getting tired of this?” she asked the Sith lord pacing in front of the containment field holding her. She was only half-joking; this routine, this eternal stalemate, _was_ becoming somewhat exhausting even with Jedi endurance.

Lord Ayeir laughed a little, but she didn't _feel_ amused, and that took Samte a little off-guard. Ayeir had always seemed to genuinely enjoy their banter, and although Samte would never admit it, she shared the sentiment. The prickle of amusement in the Sith's Force-presence was an almost constant presence when they talked. Now that prickling sense of laughter was gone, replaced by a dark cast to the Sith lord's Force-presence and a sensation like restlessly shifting sand.

_This really has been going on too long,_ Samte thought wearily, _if I've become this familiar with a Sith lord's Force-presence._

“If I had my way, _this_ would be over now,” Ayeir told her, and Samte had no reason to doubt it was true. She'd lost this round, and Ayeir had the chance to kill her now. That she wasn't taking it was... disturbing. “But I'm not the only one whose attention you've drawn this time, Jedi.”

Before Samte could respond, the door hissed open. In one smooth motion Ayeir turned to face it and dropped to one knee, head bowed. “Master,” she greeted the figure in the doorway, and Samte's blood ran cold.

Samte had heard of Darth Sayin, of course, but she'd never encountered her. Sayin's prize apprentice did most of her dirty work, and Samte tended to end up on the front lines of fights more than orchestrating behind the scenes. The cold power of Sayin's Force-presence was a shock. She was quieter, subtler than Lord Ayeir, a silky song that almost – almost – belied the power lurking under the surface. Samte found herself strengthening her shields instinctively, not wanting this woman to get even the faintest glimpse into her mind.

As Darth Sayin descended the steps, Samte actually got a good look at her for the first time. She was young for such a high-ranking Sith, barely a decade older than Samte herself. Her skin was light, though not nearly as pale as Ayeir's, dark hair cut along her jawline. She ignored the kneeling Ayeir, moving past her to look over her prisoner. Samte refused to drop her gaze, no matter how unnerving eyes that shade of yellow-orange might be in a human face, and Sayin smiled faintly. She circled Samte once, slowly. Samte didn't bother trying to twist to follow her, just waited for her to come around into Samte's view again. “So this is the famed Jedi knight Samte Starweaver,” she mused. She reached up and grasped Samte's chin in surprisingly strong fingers, forcing her to turn her head under Sayin's inspection. “So young, to have been such trouble for my apprentice.” Her eyes shone, acid yellow. “But oh, you _are_ powerful, aren't you?”

Samte jerked her head back, out of Sayin's grasp. “Renata Sayin,” she said coolly. “I've heard of you. I wish I could say it was a pleasure to finally meet you, but...” She shrugged as best she could in the restraints, glancing up at the energy containment field holding her in place. “Given the circumstances.”

If she'd expected banter, she got none; Sayin only eyed her coldly before turning away. The dismissal was palpable, and Samte had to remind herself not to feel offended. “Apprentice,” she purred, returning to stand before Lord Ayeir, who was still kneeling with her head bowed. At the word, Ayeir looked up at her master. “You're sure she has the information we need?”

“I am, master.”

“And you'll be able to get it from her?”

A pause. “She has proven... _resilient_ in the past, master. But I will break her.”

Sayin _hmm_ed, raising her chin, and Samte watched in shock and then growing horror as she raised a hand, clenching her fingers in the air. Ayeir twitched, eyes going wide, but didn't fight back or try to stand even as Samte watched the skin of her throat turn white under the pressure of an invisible hand. “You _will_ break her,” Darth Sayin repeated, voice gone hard and cold. “You _will_ succeed, and you will show me that this _Jedi_ is not the better of you.” Ayeir's chest spasmed, the body's instinct to fight against the force choking her suppressed with a visible effort. Sayin let her suffocate for a moment longer, then released her.

Ayeir buckled a little despite herself, coughing and gasping for air. She spoke with some difficulty, voice a little rough and words coming between panting breaths. “As... you say... master.”

Darth Sayin clucked her tongue softly, taking a half step forward to brush her thumb against Ayeir's cheek. When she spoke, her voice was soft again, all silk and sweetness that made Samte's skin crawl after what she'd just watched. “Oh, sweet one. You have so much yet to learn. I just want you to be strong for me, you know that.”

Ayeir took a shuddering breath, but she leaned into the touch, and Samte shivered. “Yes, master,” she said, almost plaintive despite the rough edge still present from being choked moments earlier. “I'm trying.”

“I know,” Darth Sayin assured her. She stepped back again and turned away from them both, toward the door. “I expect nothing but the best from you, apprentice,” she said smoothly. “You will break the Jedi.” The unspoken _or else_ hung in the air, not needing to be voiced, and then the door hissed open and closed again and she was gone.

Lord Ayeir stood again, and Samte shivered. The Sith turned to look at her, eyes narrow – perhaps sensing something of her horror, perhaps just on instinct – and before she could think better of it Samte said, “I'm – I'm so _sorry._”

She winced at the flare of _rage_ that spiked out from Ayeir, almost blinding in its intensity for a heartbeat before she managed to mostly block it off. “Oh, _no,_” she snarled, advancing on Samte and slashing a hand through the air. “Don't you _dare_ pity me! You're my prisoner, and you're _pitying_ me? I don't _believe_ you!”

“I'm Sayin's prisoner,” Samte corrected softly. “Just as I see now that you're her slave.”

“I am _no one's slave!_” Ayeir roared, close enough now to almost make Samte flinch reflexively.

“You do whatever she wants, and she doesn't value you at all. If that's not slavery, I don't -”

Samte was cut off by her windpipe closing off, crushed by the twist of Force around her. She spasmed once, instinctively, and Ayeir dragged her down by the Force hold on her throat until her shoulders screamed under the strain and Ayeir could hiss directly into her face. “You're lucky I still need you alive.” She released the Jedi and drew back a bit, snarl turning to a wicked smile. “Or perhaps unlucky.”

* * *

“I have a job for you, apprentice.”

“Anything you ask, master.”

Darth Sayin looked up at her as they walked down the hallway. “I want you to save the Jedi, and make her believe you've turned to the light side.”

Ayeir blinked, stopping in her tracks. “Master?”

“Don't make me repeat myself,” Sayin reminded her, raising an eyebrow, and Ayeir bit her tongue. Sayin continued without waiting for an apology. “The Jedi have seen it before, though not often – a Sith turned to the light side. They protect these traitors, teach them in their own path.” Her lips curled in disgust as she spoke. “You will take her from this place and far away – take her home to Coruscant, or even Tython if you can. Do whatever it takes to convince her you have turned to the light side. This Jedi is foolhardy and soft like the rest. She will fancy herself your _savior,_ and do whatever she can to aid you. Learn from her. Learn all you can of the Jedi. And when the time is right...” She smiled, almost sweetly, if it hadn't been for the dark glint in her eyes. “Strike her down.” Sayin interlaced her fingers behind her back. “Then the nuisance will be dead, and the Jedi will learn that they cannot trust Sith who claim to have turned traitor. And without the protection of the Jedi, we will be able to destroy the real traitors to our order.”

Ayeir hesitated for a heartbeat, but smothered her doubt before it could fully form, before her master could sense it in her mind. She dipped her head. “As you command, master.”

Sayin clucked her tongue softly, reaching up to straighten Ayeir's robes. “What is it, sweet?”

Ayeir shook her head. “Only a moment's thought, master,” she promised. “It will be as you say.”

Her master sighed. “I know it will not be easy for you,” she said, voice soft and gentle. “You must walk the line, convincing the Jedi you have turned to the light without actually falling. You must be strong for me, sweet.” She smiled sadly, brushing her palm against Ayeir's cheek. Ayeir leaned into the touch, so rarely offered, before she could quite stop herself. “I know you won't disappoint me. I know you can do this for me, if you just try hard enough.”

The thought of disappointing her made Ayeir's chest go tight. “I will,” she promised. “It will be as you say, master. I'll make you proud.”

Sayin laughed, but it was light, not mocking, and the thread of tension in Ayeir's body relaxed a fraction. “I know you will,” she promised, patting Ayeir's shoulder once and turning away. “Now go. Prepare for your mission.”

_I will make you proud of me,_ Ayeir vowed silently, watching Sayin go for a moment before turning toward her own rooms. _I will be strong for you. I promise._

* * *

Samte awoke suddenly, but she couldn't immediately pinpoint what had broken her restless sleep. The room was silent and still, and Samte peered into the darkness beyond the faint light from her containment field and waited.

The door hissed, and clicked shut. _Ah._ She waited, watched, too exhausted to do anything more, and a figure edged into the light.

Part of Samte wanted to speak, to make a weak attempt at banter, but there was something strange in the dark sense of purpose radiating from Ayeir as she moved forward, lightsaber igniting in her hand. _So this is how I die,_ Samte thought, and she couldn't even muster any real emotion at the thought.

Ayeir swung, and Samte flinched, but then she was _falling_ instead of _dying_ and in her shock and general exhaustion she didn't have a chance to catch herself. Instead she hit the floor hard, knees first and then the rest of the way down, a soft groan of pain escaping her as her muscles screamed at the impact. A soft sigh reached her through the blaze of agony. A moment later hands were working their way under her, lifting her into the air.

Samte kicked feebly, almost more in surprise than defiance, and Ayeir growled under her breath as she slung the Jedi over her shoulder like a sack of tubers. “Stop moving. I'm trying to help you, you stupid Jedi.”

_Why?_ Her mind was spinning, her mouth wouldn't form even the simple question, too fuzzed-out by the pain of moving – or, rather, being moved. She gave up and focused on reaching out into the Force to try and dull it at least enough that she could function again.

Ayeir carried her up the stairs, out the door – they passed the collapsed heaps of two guard droids, still smoking from the lightsaber slashes across their torsos. Ayeir must have killed them on the way in. Why? She could go anywhere she liked here, surely?

They moved through hallways at breakneck speed, so fast despite Samte's added weight that Ayeir surely must have been using the Force to aid her. Samte, for her part, was mostly still focused on controlling and muffling the jolts of fire lancing through her at every step. Her head was starting to clear, at least, but she still couldn't quite wrap it around this turn of events.

Ayeir slid to a stop in front of blast doors, keying them open awkwardly with her lightsaber hand. The doors slid open and someone shouted from inside; a heartbeat later Ayeir slammed back against the wall as blaster fire whizzed past them into the hall. Samte's head hit the wall and she yelped.

Ayeir shifted so Samte wasn't pinned against the wall, cursing under her breath. “Someone alerted the guards. I could make it there alone easily, but...” She hissed softly.

“I think I can walk,” Samte managed, swallowing a rising wave of nausea despite her words. “With help.”

Ayeir hesitated, eyeing her skeptically, and Samte bristled instinctively as Ayeir brushed against her in the Force, testing. That must have satisfied her, because she nodded and set Samte on her feet carefully, looping an arm around her instead. “Well, that will at least leave my saber arm free.”

“Have to do,” Samte said between gritted teeth, and Ayeir nodded and dragged them out into the room beyond.

It was the fortress's docking bay, Samte realized as they ran between ships, Ayeir's lightsaber whirling to deflect blaster bolts. Most of them went flying off in all directions, too fast to redirect toward the shooter, but Samte heard at least one soldier scream and hit the floor. Ayeir snarled in pain a moment later, but shoved Samte up the opening ramp of the ship ahead of them before turning back to focus on their attackers. Samte, for her part, caught herself on the edge of the doorway and tried to remember how to breathe through the pain.

A moment later Ayeir was rushing past her, pulling her the rest of the way into the ship and slamming the controls to close the ramp with the Force from halfway across the room as she ran for the cockpit. “Sit down, buckle up,” she shouted behind her, “it's going to be a rough ride!”

Samte obeyed, clumsier than usual, giving up on the safety belt at last and just clinging to the armrests. Despite the warning, the ship only jolted a little, shuddered once as if the shields had taken a hit, and then the engine was gunning and settling into a smooth rhythm. It roared once more, then settled again – hyperspace – and a moment later Ayeir reappeared from the doorway to the cockpit.

She didn't even glance at Samte, just moved to the far wall and started fishing around in cabinets set into the wall panels. Samte recognized medical supplies in her arms when she turned back and walked over to kneel at Samte's side. Samte wondered if she should resist – but then, why go to all this trouble just to poison her now? So she sat still and let the Sith inject stims she recognized on sight and those she didn't, rolling out bandages for the worst of Samte's wounds. She didn't need to inspect; she'd made most of those marks herself – and, anyway, there wasn't that much surface damage to begin with. Lightning didn't leave many marks on the skin.

Samte sighed in relief as the stims took effect, easing the pain without dulling her senses just yet. She knew she would have to succumb to the mind-numbing effects soon if she wanted the stims to be fully effective, but for the moment she let the Force flow through her, slowing the stim's spread. She had questions that needed answering. “Why are you doing this?”

Ayeir paused, then continued her work. “I... thought about what you said,” she said quietly. “About me being Sayin's slave. And how a Jedi would never treat her apprentice like Sayin treats me.”

_Ah._ There had been a few brief conversations to that effect – a few attempts by Samte to extend sympathy and reason, and in doing so to hopefully gain sympathy in return. Apparently she'd been more successful than she thought. “And?”

“And... the words rang true.” Ayeir leaned back on her heels, not meeting Samte's gaze. She was strangely muffled in the Force, halfway shielding herself, but discomfort and anxiety was leaking through. _But what is it she's afraid of?_ “It's always been normal. It's the Sith way.” She swallowed hard, glancing away. “But maybe... maybe the Sith way isn't the right one.”

Oh, this was a strange situation, the ever-confident Sith lord sounding small and afraid, speaking words that must have been heresy to her own ears. The logical part of Samte told her to be wary of tricks. But there was her Force-presence, and nothing there spoke of deception, at least not obviously.

“So what now?” Samte asked softly. “Are you leaving the Sith order, then?”

Ayeir laughed a little, though it sounded more like a nervous laugh than genuine humor. “I guess I am now, aren't I? I didn't... didn't quite think this through this far. I don't know where to go from here.” She shook her head. “There's nowhere I _can_ go. Sayin will hunt me down. Gods, what am I _doing?_”

“Come with me.”

Ayeir's head jerked up and she stared at Samte. “What?”  
_Good question,_ a part of Samte thought wryly. But it was as obvious a solution as existed, and Samte wouldn't take it back now. “Come with me to Coruscant. The Jedi there can help you. We can protect you. And maybe if the Sith path isn't the right one, the Jedi way can be.” She smiled, trying to be encouraging, shielding her own doubts. The last thing they both needed was for Ayeir to feel her private misgivings about this offer.

Ayeir stared at her for a long moment, uncertain and suspicious. That was fair. Samte supposed she would have been suspicious too, if their positions had been swapped. At last, Ayeir asked softly, “You really think they'll take me?”

Samte nodded. “Yes. I'll vouch for you with the Council, if they'll let me.”

Ayeir looked away and laughed a little. “I'll never understand you,” she sighed. “That you would try to help me, after everything I've done to you.”

Samte shrugged, then winced as her muscles protested the movement. Ayeir smirked and then winced herself, glancing at her own shoulder. “You're hurt, aren't you?” Samte asked. “Let me help.”

“You're in no condition to be helping anyone, Jedi,” Ayeir told her, batting her hand away lightly. “I'll have Z5 do it. He's no med-droid, but he's capable enough. It's just a blaster burn.” She stood and offered a hand to pull Samte up. Samte stumbled before finding her feet, drowsiness starting to encroach on her from the stims. “I'll show you the crew quarters and then you can focus on getting some sleep for once.”

“Thank you,” Samte mumbled, and she practically fell into bed, barely aware of Ayeir sighing and tossing a light blanket over her before vanishing into the hallway as Samte lost consciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, Ayeir did not think this plan through as much as she probably should have. She's like that.
> 
> I almost added scenes to this, namely the conversations I alluded to in the last section, but in the end I decided I didn't really want to graphically describe torture like I would have to if I did that. So I just left it an allusion to something that happens off-screen. Samte's also not thinking this plan through as much as she probably should, but to be fair, she's not in the best physical or mental shape right now.
> 
> There's also one deleted scene here that was basically just another repetition of the cycle that was outlined last chapter - I ended up cutting it because it was underdeveloped and it didn't really serve a purpose, even if I had finished writing it all out. (I mean, except confirming that Achil'vedra's still around, but she doesn't become anything resembling a major character until MUCH later in the story.) Maybe I'll post it as a one-shot/deleted scene someday if people are interested, ha.
> 
> (I hate asking for comments, but - if you're reading and enjoying, let me know what you've liked so far! It really does a lot to motivate me to keep going with this whole endeavor. Also, should I have written the scenes I decided to cut? Opinions on that'll let me know how I should handle the editing in similar situations in the future! Thanks for sticking with me, in any case!)


	4. Hiding Place (Or, In Which Samte is Too Empathetic)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **CHAPTER CONTENT WARNINGS: referenced family death, referenced abuse**
> 
> Samte continues to be too compassionate for her own good, and Ayeir's still not thinking things through completely.

“This is dangerous, Samte,” Amaron warned.

They were walking through the halls of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant together. Periodically another knight passed, or a gaggle of padawans chattering to each other, but for the most part they were alone, late afternoon sunlight filtering in through the open columns on the outer wall. Samte sighed. “I know.”

“Lord Ayeir has committed war crimes, slaughtered innocents.”

“You don't think I know that?” Samte asked, glaring at him. “I know what she's capable of. I've been fighting to stop her for months.”

Amaron tilted his head, acquiescing to that. “So you have. Yet now you bring her to the Temple. Why?”

Samte hesitated. Her reasons sounded insane, and she knew it. She knew exactly what he would say. But she had to be honest with her old master, or else why did she bother talking to him? “I have to believe in second chances,” she said quietly. “If she truly wants to change, if she truly wants to turn away from the dark side, how can we turn her away?”

Amaron hummed thoughtfully as they turned out onto one of the many balconies overlooking the city planet. Speeders and larger vehicles zipped back and forth far below, the lanes of traffic almost like rivers of light more than vehicle paths, especially with the low-hanging sun glinting off their hulls. Everything was cast in the same soft golden light, a breathtaking aura on Coruscant, but it did little to soften the creases of worry on Amaron's face. He wasn't elderly by any means, but he was nearly twenty years older than Samte, and he'd done a lot of fighting in his life. It showed in the graying salt-and-pepper hair, the lines of his face, the weary air his green eyes took sometimes when he was worried about something. They'd taken it on now, and she touched his mind softly in the Force, barely a brush of feeling. He was troubled, much more deeply than he was admitting, but what by wasn't clear.

He noticed the touch, and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, closing down his shields a little more firmly even as he smiled wryly. “I'm just worried, Samte. This all feels of trouble, for the Order and for you, but I can't get a solid idea of why precisely. It all centers around this Sith, that much I know.”

She couldn't come up with a good response to that – he was probably right, much as she hated it – and so instead she just hummed noncommittally and stared out at the Coruscant skyline, leaning against the balcony railing with her old master.

“The Council wants to put her on trial.”

Samte sighed. “I know.”

“She will be found guilty.”

“I know.” Samte ran a hand through her hair, trying not to feel too frustrated at the predicament. Ayeir _was_ guilty, that was just it – she was guilty of everything they would accuse her of. But did that mean she didn't deserve the chance to try and be better?

Amaron looked over at her again, as if sensing her thoughts, though she didn't feel him reading her in the Force. Possibly he'd just known her long enough to guess what she was thinking. “The Sith excel at deception,” he reminded her gently. “Rarely can they be trusted.”

“I know _that,_ too. But there's something in her that's...” She shook her head. “She's afraid. I could feel it when she rescued me, and when we spoke afterward. With the way her master treated her, I don't blame her. It's possible something happened that pushed her far enough to break away.” Samte smiled wryly at Amaron. “If there's one thing the Sith _can_ be trusted to stick to, it's self-preservation.”

He chuckled. “True enough. There are any number of things that could be causing that fear, Samte. The dark side itself, for one thing. It's likely she's manipulating her Force-presence, picking and choosing what you can and can't pick up from her to create the picture of a victim she wants you to see.”

Samte sighed. “It's possible.” She shook her head. “But I have to _try._ If there's any chance she could be saved, brought back to the light, I have to try.”

Amaron put his arm around her shoulders, squeezing briefly. “Oh, little Starweaver. Always wanting to see the best in people, even at the expense of yourself.”

“I just want to give her a second chance.” She scoffed a little, mock-annoyance. “And I'm not so little anymore, _Master Shiir._”

“No, you're not,” he agreed. “You've grown from that bright-eyed padawan to be one of the greatest Jedi this order has seen in generations. You'll shake the stars someday, mark my words.” He smiled out at the city, almost melancholy. “You'll find the right path.”

She glanced at him, sensing the meaning under his words. “Master?”

He looked down at her and smiled again, releasing her and turning toward the temple doors. “Trust your feelings, Samte. May the Force be with you.”

“May the Force be with you,” she murmured in return.

* * *

Ayeir paced the length of the room she'd been given to stay in, growing tenser by the minute. Well – _given_ was generous. She'd been more or less locked up in house arrest here, security cameras in the corners watching her and Temple guardians stationed outside her door. She was good, but she was also unarmed, her lightsaber left behind on Vigilance where it would be safe. She might be able to kill the guard Jedi anyway, with pure Force. But they would slow her down, and there would still be a Temple's worth of Jedi between her and escape – odds even Ayeir didn't like.

Not that she really _wanted_ to escape anyway, per se. That wasn't her mission, and her master would be extremely... _cross_ with her if they'd released their most valuable prisoner for nothing. But neither did she want to go on trial before the Jedi Council – or the Republic courts, for that matter.

“Could really use an update right now,” she muttered to herself. “Where's Starweaver when you need her?”

As if the words had summoned her, Ayeir had only walked a few more paces before she felt a new presence outside her door, golden in her Force-sense. She turned to see the door opening, and none other than Samte Starweaver waving off the Temple guardian that tried to accompany her into the room. The door closed behind her, and she smiled at Ayeir, though it seemed a bit tense. “How are you holding up?”

“Oh, a thousand people in the building who want to kill me, surveillance watching my every move, confined to quarters smaller than my ship by order of people who would execute me as soon as look at me,” Ayeir replied lightly, leaning on the back of a chair and putting on an air of casual boredom. “Not so different from Dromund Kaas, really.”

Starweaver winced a little. “Sounds pretty bad when you put it like that.”

Ayeir waved a hand. “Oh, don't worry about me. At least, don't worry _yet._ How are things looking with the Council?”

Starweaver ran a hand through her hair, looking away. Ayeir let her dry smile fade. “That bad?”

“They want to put you on trial,” Starweaver said quietly. “I've tried to talk them out of it, but...”

Ayeir smiled again, a little more grim this time. “Talking rarely deters people from wanting to destroy an enemy. I'm surprised they're even waiting until the trial, honestly.”

“Of course they are,” Starweaver said, sounding a little offended. “Jedi are bound to the law like anyone else. Everyone, no matter what the Council thinks of them, is given a fair trial.”

Ayeir laughed. “Fair! _Fair_ is a bit generous.” She gestured to the door, indicating the Jedi standing guard beyond, no doubt monitoring both of their Force-presences for any sign of trouble. “They've already decided what they think of me. We _both_ know that the result of any _trial_ I'm given is already determined.”

Starweaver looked uncomfortable with that, and a ripple of unease crossed her Force-presence, surprising Ayeir. Starweaver had always been immensely skilled at shielding her emotions, and she'd rarely let her guard down enough to show even a brief flash of what she was feeling to Ayeir. Nothing Ayeir had said in the past had made her show that shade of uneasy, sickly green before, even for a moment. _Maybe she's finally realizing how hypocritical and dishonest the Republic really is. Or maybe she's just letting her guard down now that she thinks I'm on her side._

“I know,” Starweaver admitted quietly. “But... I have to believe in second chances. I have to believe a person can change.”

Ayeir arched an eyebrow at her, questioning silently, but it was ignored. Starweaver walked past her to the window overlooking Coruscant, the city-planet's lights blinking and sparkling in the growing darkness. “Coruscant is a beautiful planet,” she said, “but I can't help missing the wilder planets like Tython.” Ayeir blinked at the abrupt subject change, and Starweaver glanced back at her. “The Outer Rim may hold some lawless, chaotic planets, but it's also home to some of the most beautiful ones. I hear Kyria's springtime is beautiful. Have you ever been?”

Ayeir nodded slowly. “I have. We had a vacation home there, a long time ago.”

Starweaver tilted her head, curious. “Sayin didn't strike me as the vacationing type.”

Ayeir clenched her jaw, regretting her words. “...My family,” she admitted, crossing her arms over her chest. “Before Sayin.”

Starweaver blinked, and Ayeir felt the spark of curiosity from her this time more than saw it – a glimmer of sharper, brighter gold in the Force that vanished as quickly as it had appeared. But she didn't press, and instead just said quietly, “I hope you get to see it again someday.”

Ayeir narrowed her eyes slightly, stretching out in the Force to touch the Jedi's mind and try to confirm what she _thought_ was hiding behind those words, but Starweaver's shields were as firm as ever. “Me too,” she murmured at last.

As it turned out, it didn't matter how well the halls were guarded. The exterior Temple walls, with all their carvings and sculpted decorations, were laughably easy to climb down, especially with the Force to aid her. They hadn't thought to completely lock down her ship, and once she was inside, Vigilance was _more_ than capable of outrunning the Jedi. Ayeir was up and away and in hyperspace before they'd managed to land a single shot on Vigilance's hull.

Ayeir didn't know how Samte had come to choose Kyria, but she was somewhat glad for the choice. The planet was quiet, a backwater world on the Outer Rim that nobody bothered with because it held no real resources and wasn't close enough to any important systems to serve as more than a quick stop on a trade route for most. The few colonists who did live there kept to themselves in small settlement towns. Most of the world was wild still, dense forests and open expanses of plains. It was a beautiful planet, to be sure, and this _had_ been a vacation home for the Acheron family, but that wasn't the whole truth. In all honesty, the little cabin tucked into the mountains bordering the Western Sea on this no-name world also made an excellent hiding place when the Acheron family had needed to lay low for a while. Even Sith sometimes needed a place to be out of sight and out of mind.

She was at that cabin now, standing in the shadow of its walls as she scanned the sky, infrared vision turning it deep purple-black with a blood-red sun. She saw the ship before she heard it, a distant greenish speck that rapidly turned to red, gold, then white as it descended into the atmosphere and heat gathered around its hull. When the faint roar of its engines reached her ears, she closed her eyes and switched off the infrared, brushing off the flicker of discomfort behind her eyes as her vision returned to normal. The ship came into view a moment later, coming in over the sea, an ostentatious gold-and-white paint coat that screamed of _Jedi_ even if Ayeir hadn't recognized the ship as Starweaver's. She pulled her holocomm off her belt and hailed it as it drew nearer.

“Starweaver.”

“Ayeir?” Starweaver sounded surprised. “Where are you?”

Ayeir stepped out from under the house's shadow, igniting her lightsaber and raising it in the air to catch the Jedi's attention. “At the base of the mountains.”

“I see you.” Ayeir dismissed her lightsaber and hooked it on her belt again. “Where's your ship?”

“Vigilance is hidden. You can land yours on the beach for now, as close to the treeline as possible.” She paused. “You _did_ make sure you weren't tracked, didn't you?”

A pause. Background noise filtered through, the beeps and chatter of a droid, though too distorted and muffled for Ayeir to get anything out of it. “...Yes. Definitely.”

“_Starweaver._”

“It's fine! Ajax had me covered.”

Ayeir growled. “Ajax? You brought someone with you?”

“AG-X10. My astromech. Will you _please_ calm down?”

Ayeir raised an eyebrow, though with an audio-only call Starweaver wouldn't see. “You're putting an awful lot of trust in a droid.”

“Ajax and I have been through a lot. It's fine. The beach, you said?”

“As close under the treeline as you can get with that clanker.”

Starweaver scoffed. “Hey, the Phoenix is a good ship! She can manage anything _your_ old ship can do.”

Ayeir growled again. “Don't insult Vigilance,” she snapped. “She's got twice the maneuverability and half again the firepower your measly _corvette_ can manage.”

Starweaver laughed. “All right, all right. Someone's protective. I'll see you in a few.”

The comm channel beeped off, and Ayeir huffed. “Protective,” she muttered, crossing her arms and watching the Phoenix descend onto the beach. “I'll show you _protective._”

“Nice place,” Starweaver called from the front room. Ayeir pulled another can of food down from the shelf and examined it skeptically. “You come here often?”

“I haven't been here in years.” She sighed and gathered up the cans she'd decided weren't likely to kill them, then headed back to the front room. “Can't say there's much left in the kitchen worth -”

She stopped in her tracks at the doorway. Starweaver was standing in front of the fireplace, which had been lit, holding an old picture frame in her hands and looking down at it. She looked up at Ayeir when her footsteps stopped, eyes shining in curiosity. “Who are they?”

Ayeir dropped the food in her arms onto the nearest chair and snatched the picture frame out of the Jedi's hands, clutching it to her chest.

“_Don't touch that!_”

A heartbeat later she realized how defensive she must have looked and swallowed hard, looking down at the photo. It was old-fashioned, flimsy instead of a holo – but then, that was why it had lasted this long without maintenance. Starweaver had brushed the dust off the glass protecting the photo, and a group of painfully familiar faces smiled up at her.

She set it gingerly back down on the mantle and lowered herself to the floor next to the chair now filled with cans, suddenly weary. Starweaver was still watching her, curiosity tinging with concern. “My family,” Ayeir said quietly. “A long time ago.”

She picked up a can and examined the label, more to give herself something to do than out of any real interest, and Starweaver sat down across from her. “What happened?”

Ayeir looked up to glare, and Starweaver raised her hands in a placating gesture. “I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked. My curiosity gets the better of me sometimes. You don't have to answer that.”

Ayeir sighed, pulled her vibroknife out of its hidden sheath, and cut through the lid of the can. “No. It's fine. It _was_ a long time ago.” She cut open a can and handed it to Starweaver. “I was born into the Sith. The Force ran strong with our bloodline, and our family had been Sith for generations. That gave us a lot of privilege, but it... also gave us a lot of enemies.” She gestured to the room they were sitting in. “Hence, Kyria.”

“A hiding place.”

“Yes.” She mused over her next words for a moment before speaking. “I was six years old. A rival Sith came to attack our family. He took us by surprise, wiped our entire staff and guard out before we could flee.” She reached for a fork, realized she hadn't brought one from the kitchen, and switched the vibroblade off to stab at her food with that instead, trying and probably failing to look apathetic. “I survived because my mother managed to hide me before he found us. The rest of my family...” She shrugged, pursing her lips. “My parents were strong, but not strong enough. He slaughtered them.”

Starweaver – _Samte,_ she needed to stop calling her Starweaver – made a small sound of sympathy, and Ayeir bridled at the sound. “Don't,” she snapped. “Don't pity me. It made me strong.”

“Still,” Samte said quietly. “No child should lose their family so young.”

Ayeir snorted. “Don't the Jedi take children away from their families as babies?”

A moment of uncomfortable silence. She looked up and saw Samte gone still, staring at the fire. “It's not the same,” she said at last, and Ayeir almost laughed. “Our families aren't _dead._ And the Jedi become our new family. It's not like that.”

Ayeir arched an eyebrow. “Isn't it? Do you even remember your family?”

The silence was enough of an answer. Ayeir let it hang in the air for a moment before continuing, “Anyway, Sayin found me in the wreckage. She'd foreseen that he wouldn't completely succeed in wiping out House Acheron, and she saw the power I would have. So she came and found me, and took me under her wing. She raised me as her own child.” She scraped the bottom of the can. “I owe her my life.”

“Sounds like you pretty much gave it to her,” Samte murmured, and Ayeir had no reply to that. Samte glanced up at the picture on the mantle. “They look happy,” she added softly. “You look happy.”

Ayeir scoffed. “Yeah. Well. Like I said. It was a long time ago.”

As she stretched to reach for another can, pain stabbed through the back of her shoulder and she winced. “That blaster shot is bothering you, isn't it?” Samte asked.

“It's fine,” Ayeir told her, waving her off and smothering the throbbing pain so Samte wouldn't sense it in the Force. “It's nothing.”

“It's _not_ nothing,” Samte argued, frowning at her. “You took a hit from a blaster bolt.”

“Just a glancing one. I said it's fine.” She rolled her eyes at the Jedi. “Honestly, Starweaver, Sayin's given me worse _herself._ It'll heal.”

Instead of laughing, Samte's expression changed to one of confusion and worry. “_Sayin's_ given you worse? Worse than a _blaster shot?_ I thought you said she _raised_ you.”

Ayeir stared at her. “...Yes? And?”

“I don't understand. Was it an accident?”

Ayeir laughed a little, more a nervous and uncertain reaction than genuine amusement. “Of – of course not. A darth doesn't do anything by _accident._ Didn't your master ever punish you for failure?”

A shock of horror flashed between them in the Force, and Ayeir reeled a little, surprised by the strength of it before it vanished. “Never like _that,_” Samte exclaimed. “Master Shiir would never punish an apprentice using pain. No Jedi would. It's – it's awful. Almost barbaric.”

Ayeir swallowed, uncertain. “Oh.”

There was an awkward pause, and Samte sighed, visibly calming herself. “Here. Let me see.”

She shuffled across to Ayeir, and Ayeir let her fuss over the wound, mulling over her words. She was very used to shock and horror following her wherever she went. She was very _not_ used to that shock and horror being directed at something other than her own actions. Any Sith would have laughed at the suggestion that it was _barbaric._ Of course Sayin punished her apprentice with blood and burn. That was the price of failure. Pain made them stronger.

_Yet Samte has never faced that price for failure, and she's as strong as me._

She pushed _that_ uncomfortable thought aside. _No. She's trying to turn you. Be strong. Make Sayin proud._

_ Learn what you can. Strike when the opportunity arises._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ayeir is not a patient creature by her nature, and if we're being completely honest, Samte isn't much better.
> 
> So it begins.
> 
> If you're reading and enjoying, let me know what you've liked so far!
> 
> EDIT: Lest anyone notice and wonder why I've edited the fancy "~~^~~" line breaks I used to use to indicate POV shift out of my chapters: it's recently been brought to my attention that screen readers read all those characters individually - I apologize to anyone using a screen reader who just had to listen to that in this note, by the way - and it's extremely difficult to get through. So although I like it aesthetically better, in the interest of accessibility, I've changed all those to AO3's programmed-in line breaks instead.


	5. Learning (Or, In Which Ayeir Realizes Much of Her Normalcy Isn't Normal)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The funny thing about an abusive situation is that often you don't realize how abusive it was until you're out of it and other people start looking at you strangely for things you thought were normal.

“Try it again,” Samte urged. “Don't force it. Just listen. Feel.”

Ayeir hissed something under her breath in a language Samte didn't know, but she closed her eyes and reached out in the Force again. Samte knew from the moment she did that she would fail again; she seemed incapable of relaxing, and it impeded her ability to feel the Force's natural flow around her. Samte could feel her reach out, bright and strong in the Force, too sudden and too strong – she warped the flow of it just by the way she reached for it.

“All right,” she sighed.

Ayeir growled in frustration. “If you keep interrupting me, how am I supposed to do anything?”

“If you keep doing the same thing, you're not learning anyway,” Samte reminded her, then winced at the sparks of anger she felt off Ayeir in the Force. “I'm sorry. I'm struggling to explain myself, that's all. If I could just...” She shook her head, folding her hands in front of her face and pressing her index fingers against her lips. She'd helped younglings with this lesson often enough, but the usual methods of explaining what she meant weren't helping Ayeir – she was too stuck on a previous way of thinking and doing things. _And I don't think she's trying very hard._ If she could find another way to explain it...

Her eyes fell on their lightsabers, laid on the ground in an attempt to ease Ayeir's nerves, and an idea sparked in the back of her mind. She turned back to Ayeir. “What's the most important thing someone just picking up saber combat has to learn? The most common mistake?”

Ayeir frowned. “What does that have to do with -”

“Just answer the question.”

She took a moment to think, turning the question over in her mind. “It's not about being fast,” she said slowly. “It's about getting there at the right time.”

Samte nodded, a relieved smile touching her lips. Just as she'd thought – saber combat, at its most basic, was universal, regardless of the form you eventually adopted and regardless of whether you were Sith or Jedi. “Exactly. This is the same. It's not about being faster or hitting harder – it's about getting where you want to at the _right_ time, about letting the Force guide you instead of vice versa. You're not trying to manipulate it, not yet. It's about feeling how it naturally flows around you. To do that, you have to relax, and stop trying to force yourself to get there faster.”

Ayeir's brow furrowed as she mulled that over, but she sighed and tried again.

_Relax,_ Samte urged her silently, and for once, Ayeir did.

Samte felt the shift like a key change in a song, striking a new chord that resonated in her chest and almost made her catch her breath. Ayeir's Force-presence shivered once before settling into the new resonance too. The edges of her mind, eternally hard and sharp as durasteel blades, softened now, and the pull she always seemed to exert on the Force just by existing eased a little.

The Force flowed around them unimpeded, leaving them two stones in the bottom of a stream, and Ayeir let out a shocked, quiet breath. “Oh.”

Almost as soon as the sound had crossed her lips, she _flinched_ in the Force, turning hard and sharp again as fast as she'd softened, and the Force flinched with her, shying away like a startled animal. Samte opened her eyes – she'd closed them at some point, without realizing – to find Ayeir glaring at some point off to their side, not meeting her gaze.

The wary anger darkening the surface of her thoughts couldn't fool Samte this time. She'd seen what lay beneath it, in that moment of quiet, open stillness.

“You don't have to be afraid of me,” she said softly, and regretted her choice of words before she'd even finished speaking.

Ayeir recoiled with a snarl. “I'm not _afraid_ of anything, Jedi,” she snapped. “You're -”

“I just meant,” Samte interrupted, “I'm not going to hurt you if you don't get it right on the first try.”

Ayeir froze halfway through a word. Silence fell over them, brittle and cold despite the spring sunlight.

Samte took a breath to steady herself and tried to put as much reassurance as she could into her voice. “I'm not Sayin, and that's not how the Jedi work,” she promised gently. “I know you're – I know you don't want to seem weak. But we all have to start from somewhere, to learn anything.” She tried for a smile. “And, for what it's worth, you were doing well.”

Ayeir was silent for a long moment, just watching her warily. At last, she grumbled, “Don't patronize me, Jedi.”

Samte stifled a sigh, kicking herself for her stupidity. “I'm not trying to. I promise.”

* * *

“The first line of your code is a blatant lie,” Ayeir protested. “'There is no emotion?' Please.”

Samte sighed, nudging the embers of the fire with the poker. “You're taking it too literally. It's not supposed to mean we don't _feel_ emotion, just that we try to distance emotion from judgement and decision-making.” She arched an eyebrow at Ayeir. “Besides, the Sith code isn't any better. 'Peace is a lie?' You've seen my peace, _felt_ my peace. Do you honestly think it's a lie?”

Ayeir crossed her arms. “No,” she grumbled. “But it's not permanent, either. Peace is temporary.”

“Isn't everything?” Samte asked, smiling ruefully. Ayeir blinked, then snorted. _Fair enough, I suppose._ “There's another version of the Code, you know, one you might like better. _Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet the Force._” She sat back. “It's less often used, but some Jedi claim it captures the spirit of the Code better.”

“Does it matter, if most Jedi don't agree with it?”

Samte shrugged. “Personally, I think the two have the same meaning – one is just a little more explicit, and the other more aspirational.” She sat back. “The Code is... complicated. It manages to sound very simple while hiding a lot of philosophy underneath the surface. And each line depends on and connects with the others. They can't stand on their own.”

Ayeir sighed. _You're supposed to be learning from her, not antagonizing her._ “Fine, then,” she conceded. “Enlighten me.”

Samte blinked, as if surprised, then folded her hands in her lap. “There is no emotion; there is peace,” she said, and she managed to make it sound like she genuinely found meaning in the words, rather than it being an empty recitation. “Force-sensitives can touch the Force in a lot of ways. One of those ways is through emotion, but that's difficult to control. Letting your emotions connect you to the Force requires you to let them grow strong enough that they become difficult to handle. It becomes overwhelming, and that stress leads to anger, frustration, fear. The dark side.”

“I'm familiar,” Ayeir said dryly.

Samte made a face. “You were the one who asked.” She shook her head. “It's better to avoid that path entirely. It's possible to connect with the Force through other methods – inner peace, for example. Quieting your own mind lets you listen to the world around you, feel how the Force flows naturally around and through you. The Force is already inside you, but recognizing that and being able to control it comes from quieting your mind, your emotions. Peace and control go hand in hand.”

Ayeir turned that over in her head. “Peace _and_ control,” she murmured, half to herself. _Control_ had always been connected to _power_ in her mind. To control a situation, or a person, you had to have power over them. Power came from strength, strength from passion. The idea of control coming from _peace_ was utterly foreign.

She might have rejected it entirely, if not for what had happened earlier that same day. That heartbeat of stillness, when she'd finally forced herself to relax, and _felt_ the flow of the Force, soft and cool and shimmering in a thousand colors she'd never seen through her own scarlet?

Well. It had only been a moment.

But _what_ a _moment._

She shook herself. “Go on?”

If that was curiosity she saw in Samte's eyes, the Jedi did herself the credit of not expressing it. “There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. That one took me a long time to understand,” she admitted. “It sounds absurd, right? The wise person knows that they always have more to learn. But a Jedi knows that, and yet never stops seeking knowledge.” She smiled at Ayeir. “Even if it comes from unexpected places sometimes.”

Ayeir folded her arms across her chest. “I see.”

Samte's smile faltered for a moment, but she cleared her throat and moved on. “Well. There is no passion, there is serenity.”

Ayeir arched an eyebrow. “Seems like a repeat of the first line.”

“Kind of,” Samte admitted. “But they're not perfect synonyms. 'Passion' _can_ refer to emotion, that's true, but it can also refer to desire.” Ayeir snorted, unable to help herself, and after a beat of confusion Samte made an offended noise. “Oh, you don't have to take it like – I didn't mean it like _that,_” she complained.

“But it's so much more fun to watch you get flustered,” Ayeir drawled.

Immediately she got to watch Samte's face flush a few shades darker. “I am _not_ flustered!”

Ayeir grinned. “If you say so.”

Samte huffed, exasperated. “_Anyway._ It does link back to the first line – desire, _whatever_ form it comes in, leads to attachment, which leads to those strong emotions that can be dangerous for a Force-sensitive. Mostly the reason the Jedi Code requires us not to form attachments is because attachments lead to the fear of _losing_ those attachments. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to the dark side.”

_Isn't it worth the risk, to feel something once in a while? No, better not push too far._ She sighed. “I get the gist.”

Samte chuckled. “Yeah, a lot of things come back to that when it comes to the Code. Anyway.” She paused, as if to count the lines they'd already gone through. “There is no chaos, there is harmony.”

“Another blatant lie,” Ayeir said dryly, just to watch Samte plant her hands on her hips and glare. _No emotion, indeed._

“They're _goals,_ not necessarily _actualities,_” Samte repeated. “You seem very determined to forget that.”

“A goal that will never be achieved,” Ayeir replied, gesturing toward the ceiling. “Look at the galaxy. It's been chaotic to say the _least_ for as long as it's existed, and that will never stop.”

Samte considered that. “Maybe you're right,” she agreed, taking Ayeir by surprise. “But maybe the Code isn't about the galaxy. Maybe it's about you.”

“Me specifically?”

“Don't be an ass, you know what I mean. The chaos-harmony line is kind of the culmination of the lines before it. Distance your judgement and connection to the Force from emotion, never accept ignorance or stop seeking knowledge, and strive to rid yourself of attachments and desires, and the sources of internal conflict and chaos will be more or less gone, leaving you in balance and harmony with the Force.” She poked at the embers of the fire again, stirring them until the flames crackled stronger again. “At the same time, it's kind of about connections to others, to the world around you, to the Force.”

“The exact thing the last line tells you to get rid of,” Ayeir said slowly.

Samte sighed, shaking her head. “You're treating _connection_ and _attachment_ as perfect synonyms. They're not. Connection is impossible to avoid. I mean, to start with, we're all social species and we live in a society. But even beyond that, the Force itself connects us with every other thing in this galaxy, in this universe. _Attachment_ is...” She ran a hand through her hair, thinking. “Attachment is when you start sacrificing things for the thing you're attached to, not because it's the right thing to do, but because of your personal desire not to lose it. Does that make sense?”

Ayeir paused, considering. “Sure.”

“And the last line. There is no death, there is the Force.” Samte gazed into the flames, orange light reflecting sharp in her eyes. “We all die. Obviously. But... our souls are part of the Force, even when we're alive. Death just makes us one with the cosmic Force again. It goes back to passion, desire, loss. There's no real _loss_ at all, in the end, when everything is connected and unified by the Force. We are one with every person and every thing in this galaxy, and death makes that reality complete. Everything else – emotion, ignorance, chaos, loss – it's all temporary. Only the Force is permanent, and with it harmony, unity, peace. Everything the Jedi seek is present in that final, eternal reality – that force that unifies us all.”

Ayeir blew out a long breath. “Well. That's a lot.”

Samte chuckled. “It is. But it's also the culmination of all the other lines, so.”

Ayeir nodded. After a moment, she added quietly, “You know, for all the killing we do, Sith don't... well, we don't really think about death very much. Some come back afterward as Force-ghosts. But that seems like it's kind of the opposite of the whole _one with the Force_ thing.” She snorted. “Only happens to people who are powerful enough, anyway.”

“Angry enough, you mean,” Samte said quietly. “It takes immense anger to prevent unification with the Force. At least, that's the theory I've heard the most support for.”

“There's not much of a difference between anger and power among the Sith,” Ayeir pointed out.

“That's fair, I suppose.”

Samte had to go back to her duties two days later, but Ayeir stayed on Kyria for the time being, and Samte returned whenever she could. In the daylight hours, they trained. Samte was a good teacher, though Ayeir got the feeling she hadn't had much practice. With sabers, she taught Ayeir some of the same tricks she'd used to get the upper hand in their fights before – and asked Ayeir to show her some of the techniques the Sith learned that she was unfamiliar with. Outside their sparring matches, she showed Ayeir a whole new way to look at meditation and connecting to the Force, using calm and stillness to listen and feel the Force's natural flow instead of using the raw power of emotion to bring the Force to heel with little regard for its natural tendencies. Privately, Ayeir thought the Jedi were still missing out on the power that could be found in passion – but she did find that paying attention to the natural flow of the Force lent her an extra edge when manipulating it.

In the evenings, and sometimes late into the night, they talked about things large and small. Ayeir traded stories of Sith politics on Dromund Kaas for a better understanding of how Jedi ranking and the Council operated, careful to give just enough to keep Samte talking without offering any critical information. Samte was surprisingly amenable to talking about the Jedi – Coruscant and the Temple there; even Tython, the ancestral home of the Jedi Order where Samte had completed her training. They talked – argued, really – about philosophy, Ayeir unable to resist challenging the Jedi code even as she held herself back to avoid raising Samte's suspicions. Samte, again surprising her, met her challenges with equal energy and wit. She fielded Ayeir's accusations of hypocrisy and self-contradiction within Jedi philosophy masterfully, and once or twice Ayeir had to genuinely concede – though there were times she made Samte hesitate and waver as well. When they grew tired of arguing, they talked about things of lesser importance – recent events in the Outer Rim, games of triga or sabacc, the many strange and wonderful things they'd both seen in their travels.

Always, Samte was never anything but patient and kind. Even when their arguments ended with disagreement, she was quick to follow with a softer, friendlier topic of conversation, an obvious offer of friendship. When it came to lessons, Ayeir had always been a fast learner – one didn't survive long among the Sith without being that – but she struggled more with these lessons than she had with anything she'd learned previously, probably because it went directly against so many of her prior teachings. Yet when she was slow to pick something up, slow to understand, she was never met with the harsh punishment Sayin had dealt out for failure – only patience and understanding, gentle corrections and suggestions. Ayeir probed fiercely for any sign of deceit or insincerity, but the truth was, Samte was letting her shields down more and more as time went on, and there _were_ no such signs to be found.

_Stop it,_ she had to remind herself, more frequently the longer this went on. _She's trying to turn you. It's nothing more than that. You're stronger than that. Be strong. Make Sayin proud._

The words sounded emptier and emptier by the day, even to her. She kept saying them to herself anyway.

Ayeir wasn't sure when they'd reached the point that the long silences were comfortable instead of awkward. But here they were, in the dim evening with darkness and quiet lying thick and soft over them both. The flickering firelight from the hearth cast Samte's features in sharp oranges and deep, warm blacks as she sat across from Ayeir, sipping her tea, eyes half-lidded as though she were in some space between thought and meditation proper.

This tea usually soothed Ayeir's nerves, quieted her mind. Tonight it wasn't doing its job properly. She frowned down into her mug as if that might convince it to work better.

At last she broke the silence. “Explain something to me, Jedi.”

Her voice had been quiet, but Samte still startled a little. It took her a second to respond. “What's that?”

“Why did you...” She paused consider her phrasing. “...save me? From the Jedi Council?”

Samte's brow furrowed slightly, the way it did when Ayeir managed to say something that genuinely took her off-guard. “I told you before,” she said after a beat. “I have to believe in second chances. The Council is too cautious sometimes. Sometimes you have to take a risk to do the right thing.”

Ayeir clenched her jaw, looking away into the flames. “That still doesn't answer my question,” she said. “Why am I worth so much to you, that you would put yourself at risk like this? What do you want from me that you can't get some easier way?”

She'd expected the flutter of gray-blue concern across Samte's thoughts; the darker blue of confusion took her by surprise. “Ayeir,” Samte said slowly. “Is that all you think I'm here for? To try and get something from you?”

Ayeir frowned at her again. “...Why else would you put yourself at risk for me?”

“Because it's the right thing to do,” Samte replied.

Ayeir gritted her teeth. “That doesn't make any _sense,_” she ground out. “Risking your life for no reason? Do you think me a fool?”

“Not at all,” Samte told her, setting her mug to one side. “Morals are as good a reason as any. If you won't stand up for what you believe in, why bother saying you believe in it?”

“If you die standing up for your beliefs, you've done nothing but get yourself killed,” Ayeir countered.

“If you will risk nothing for your word, your word is useless,” Samte replied. “Surely you understand that.”

“Risks are _calculated,_” Ayeir snapped. “Thought through. You must gain _something_ from all this!”

Samte pursed her lips. “Ayeir, why are you shouting at me for trying to help you?”

Was she shouting? She was. And Samte was right. She couldn't think of a reason why.

She sat back in her chair, forcing herself to loosen her grip on her mug and take a shaky sip. Samte let her have a moment. More gently, she asked, “Are things really... like that, among the Sith? You never just... do things for each other because it's the right thing to do? Or because they're your friend?”

Ayeir snorted. “Sith don't really do _friends _very well.” She paused, a thought occurring to her, and glanced uncertainly at Samte. “Wait, are you calling me...”

She trailed off, and Samte blinked, looking as startled as Ayeir felt at the suggestion. But she laughed a little after a moment, and picked up her tea again. “I guess I am.”

Ayeir looked down into her mug, trying to decide how she felt about that, and Samte laughed again softly. Somehow she made it feel like she wasn't laughing _at_ Ayeir, though, and Ayeir decided to let it drop, focusing on getting her hands to not shake when she set her tea down.

* * *

Samte jerked awake so hard she was half upright before she'd realized she was awake. It took her a few seconds longer to understand _why_ she'd woken up.

She turned toward the opposite side of the room and winced as a wave of prickling, freezing-cold fear rolled over her, almost physically painful. There was more than that, though – panic, shame, but most of all _guilt_, dark and thick and swamping everything else in freezing pain.

Samte swung her legs over the side of the bed and walked closer to the other bed, swallowing a lump of fear and guilt in her own throat and trying to wrap herself in a tight enough shield to keep the worst of it out of her mind. That wasn't as easy as it should have been, maybe because Ayeir was so strong with the Force, maybe because she didn't bother to shield her emotions half the time already, maybe because whatever nightmare she was having was just too strong to be contained properly.

And it _was_ a nightmare. She was still lying in her bed, pale and sweating, muscles twitching as if she were dreaming of running. _Or fighting._

_Trauma nightmare,_ Samte realized.

Samte reached out, hesitated. Then Ayeir trembled again, a soft, pained sound escaping her, and Samte touched her shoulder. “Ayeir. Ayeir, wake up.”

It might not have actually had anything to do with her, but Ayeir's eyes snapped open crimson and stark in the darkness and she sat bolt upright, making Samte jump. It took her a second to focus on Samte, and longer for recognition to cross her face. Samte withdrew her hand, suddenly feeling as though she'd stepped out of line. “You – you were having a nightmare,” she said lamely. “I thought I should -”

“Get out.”

She stumbled to a stop. “Wh- what?”

Ayeir's face had turned hard, which might have been more intimidating if she didn't still look like she'd had the blood drained out of her. Her Force-presence locked down so fast it left Samte reeling from the sudden loss of emotion boiling the air. “Get. Out.”

Samte took half a step back. “I don't – I just want to help.”

“I don't need your _help,_” Ayeir snapped, though her voice wavered a little. “I said, get _out -!_”

Her voice broke then, and though she was clearly trying to project only bright anger Samte could still sense the pain and guilt seeping through that shield. The darkness made it hard to see, but there might have been tears in her eyes.

Samte stepped back again, raising her hands in a placating gesture. “Okay,” she said quietly. “I understand. If – if you change your mind, I'm here.”

Before Ayeir could respond to that, she turned and left the room, closing the door softly behind her.

She slumped back against the hallway wall, blowing a long breath out. _What was that about?_

It wasn't rocket science, she supposed. Ayeir didn't want to seem like she needed help, probably because the Sith taught that was a sign of weakness. _Bother. I thought we'd gotten past some of that._

Ayeir's shields were slipping again, Samte could feel it. She pushed herself off the wall and headed further down the hallway, down to the kitchen where it was a little easier to muffle it.

And the nightmare. _I wonder what she was dreaming about._ It could have been anything, really. From what little Samte knew of Sith, most of them had plenty of fuel for trauma. And from what little she knew of Ayeir, Ayeir was no exception.

But the _guilt._ That was surprising. She'd seen Ayeir be angry or mocking, even sensed the echoes of old grief when Ayeir saw the old picture of her family. But never _guilty._

She glanced at the clock on the wall and sighed. _Too early to be awake, probably too late to go back to sleep. Might as well make some caf._ She set a kettle of water on the stove to boil, opened the cupboard, and squinted at the labels on the jars. “Why does she label everything in Sith?” she muttered, pulling down a jar and popping it open to peer at the contents.

Five jars later, she found the caf. _Never knew she had so much tea._ She shook her head. _Suppose there's a lot I don't know about her._

_Like what she regrets so much that it wakes her up looking like she's run a Tatooine marathon in the middle of the night._

* * *

_Stop crying. Stop it._

Ayeir couldn't manage it. Every time she thought she had the tears under control, a fresh wave of sobs wracked her body.

The dream hadn't even made much sense. Most of it was a dark jumble of events, only some of which had actually happened and most of which hadn't happened in the order she'd seen them. The only constant was guilt and grief, and -

She saw it again for a heartbeat, the Zabrak's face at the moment of her death, twisted in pain from Ayeir's lightsaber buried in her chest -

Ayeir banished the image with an effort, the Force coiling around her and making the furniture in the room rattle. _It wasn't my fault. Deka deserved it. She betrayed me. She tried to kill me._

Sayin's voice, an echo from the dream. _You shouldn't have let her get so close to you in the first place. You got too attached to someone you couldn't trust. You set yourself up for betrayal._

Ayeir gritted her teeth, dashing away the last of her tears. It wasn't what Sayin had actually said afterward, but it was what she had meant. And she'd been right.

_Deep breaths. Focus your anger._

She rolled out of bed and paced the room, restless. Why was she dreaming about this _now?_ She hadn't dreamed about Deka in almost a year. And there was nothing to have triggered -

No. There was. Of course there was. _Samte._

Samte, with her kindness and gentleness and smiles. Samte, with her wit and cleverness and intelligence. Samte, who had called her _friend._

Ayeir snorted, even though it shouldn't have been funny. She couldn't recall Deka ever calling her _friend,_ even after they were sleeping together. _Girlfriend,_ sure. _Lover,_ if she was feeling nice. Never _friend._ She was a world's difference from Samte, and yet here Ayeir was falling into the same trap once again – letting someone get too close. Trusting them too much. Despite that being the _opposite_ of her mission.

She sighed and slumped back against the wall. _This has gone on too long. It has to end. Before this Force-damned Jedi ends _me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bunch of all-new scenes this time - this was one of the sections that was kind of left as a timeskipped gap originally, but since I'm actually posting it now I realized I should probably fill it in. That's half of the reason this took so long to post (the other half is because I've been Stress Incarnate for the last week and a half or so, and that's not going to stop particularly soon).
> 
> Amusing scene titles I come up with during production:  
\- Ayeir learns to shut her brain up and actually listen to what the Force is doing naturally for the first time and it's nuts  
\- Ayeir and Samte argue over the Jedi Code, aka the author decided to take its opportunity to explore Jedi philosophy (and Samte's take on it) and run with it  
\- Ayeir starts to realize that not everyone needs an ulterior motive for helping other people and it kind of messes her up  
\- Samte wakes up to Ayeir having a trauma nightmare and it kind of messes her up  
\- Reasons Ayeir Has Trust Issues, episode 1 (Alternate title [redacted for spoilers])
> 
> I really did have fun analyzing the Jedi Code, though, honestly. I didn't actually look up an analysis beforehand, so I wrote that scene entirely from my own interpretation and analysis of the Code (and Jedi philosophy in general) and I think I blew my own mind a little in the process by accident. Thoughts?
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me! The next chapter will be up a lot sooner, because it's already actually finished. (I just try not to post two chapters in one day, to give myself a little buffer time to finish the parts that still need finishing :P)
> 
> EDIT: Forgot to add - my art for this fic is going up on http://www.stars-hearts-and-laser-swords.tumblr.com/ as chapters go up!


	6. Decisions (Or, In Which Truths Must Be Faced)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One period of time closes, and another begins - neither one happens how anyone expected it to.

They were on the beach, sparring, when that time did come to an end.

Had they been paying more attention, one of them might have noticed the dull roar of a ship's engines as it drew closer. As it was, neither of them heard it until the ship in question was already almost directly overhead, obviously coming in to land on the beach, and they both extinguished their lightsabers immediately. The wind from the ship's engines whipped sand up all around them, and Samte raised her arm to protect her face, shouting to be heard. “That's not a Republic ship! Friends of yours?”

Ayeir didn't reply, cold dread coiling in her gut. She knew that ship very well.

Instead she just watched as the ship settled, as the wind died down, as the ramp opened up and Darth Sayin strode down it onto the beach, black cloak billowing behind her.

“Apprentice,” she greeted Ayeir as she approached them, liquid grace and utmost confidence. “How kind of you to meet me at the ship.”

Samte stepped between them as Sayin drew nearer. “That's far enough,” she said, voice like durasteel. Her shields were up again in full strength, showing nothing but the golden light of her signature in the Force. Ayeir couldn't read her, couldn't begin to guess why she would put herself in such danger for Ayeir. _What is she doing?_

Sayin actually stopped, expression morphing to one of mildly surprised amusement. Samte ignited her lightsabers again, raising one in a warning. “She's not yours anymore. And I won't let you hurt her again.”

Those words stunned Ayeir almost as much as Sayin's appearance had. She stood still, shocked and uncertain.

Sayin _laughed._

Samte didn't waver. As her laughter died away, Sayin mimed wiping a tear from the corner of her eye, still smiling. “You won't let me hurt her.” She chuckled again. “That's cute.”

Ayeir felt it coming, but only a split second before, and only because she'd felt it so often. Samte had no warning before she was thrown aside, Sayin's hand flicking out as if batting away a troublesome insect. To her credit, Samte managed to hit the ground in a roll instead of flat on her face, and came to her feet just in time to block the arc of Sayin's lightsaber as it swept down toward her.

Samte was _very_ good. She was already immensely strong in the Force, and Ayeir had no doubt she would become even stronger as time went on. She had trained with the Jedi practically since infancy, and she used her lightsabers with an expert dual-wielding style.

But she was tired, worn thin from sparring, and Sayin was strong too, and fully rested. If Sayin had come this morning, they would have been evenly matched – Samte might have even had the upper hand. As it was, Samte was spending as much time blocking as striking, even with two weapons to Sayin's one.

“Ayeir!” she shouted, though her focus didn't seem to waver for a moment.

Ayeir stood frozen.

Sayin flung lightning from her free hand, and Samte blocked it, catching it on her blade. It lasted only a moment, and Sayin struck hard and fast – once, twice, forcing Samte back a step, then flicking her wrist again. Samte wasn't fast enough to block it, and she fell this time, knocked past Ayeir and skidding to a stop in the sand just behind her.

Ayeir turned and ignited her lightsaber almost reflexively, leveling it at Samte's throat and pinning her in defeat. Samte blinked as if to clear her head and stared up at her. Her control wavered, and Ayeir saw hurt and confusion flicker in her eyes. “You're still serving her,” she managed, though she sounded like she'd had the wind knocked out of her when she fell. “After all this? After all she's _done_ to you? Ayeir, _why?_”

Sayin chuckled from behind her. “I must say, apprentice, I'd expected results, but this is better than I had hoped you would accomplish.” Her wine-red Force-presence sang with pleasure, soft and sweet, but somehow that failed to soothe Ayeir like it normally did. “I'm proud of you, apprentice.”

A knot in her chest eased, and another tightened. _I did it._

_ So why do I feel so awful?_

“Now,” Sayin purred. “Finish her.”

Samte stared up at her, still breathing hard. A bead of blood trickled down her temple from her forehead. Her eyes were unwavering, deep cornflower blue, not afraid, but almost... _sad._

Pity should have made her blood boil. But this didn't feel like pity, somehow.

Sayin's purr turned to a growl. “I said _finish her,_ apprentice.”

Still she hesitated, even as her blood ran cold with the warning in Sayin's voice, screaming at her to _do something, act!_

She'd killed a thousand people, a hundred Jedi, many more innocent than this one. She hadn't hesitated to kill in years. Lord Ayeir _did not hesitate._ But she hesitated now, regardless of all of that. Misguided as the attempts had been, Samte had tried to help her. She'd tried to protect her from a threat that wasn't a threat, risked her life for Ayeir's sake, never mind her place among the Jedi. She'd never _once_ shown signs of the dishonesty and arrogance Ayeir had always known the Jedi to possess.

Ayeir had resolved herself to killing Samte anyway. She'd _made_ her choice.

Yet now she hesitated, and it took her far too long to understand why.

Sayin snarled. “_Ayeir!_”

That, her name crossing Sayin's lips, snapped her out of her reverie.

“I can't,” she whispered, almost without meaning to.

And she whirled, flinging her lightsaber at her master, the woman who'd been the nearest thing to her mother for most of her life, who had raised her and trained her, who had manipulated her and abused her and shaped her into someone who would seek out _nothing_ so much as she sought Sayin's approval, someone whose entire self-worth hung on that.

Sayin almost died.

She raised her lightsaber at the last possible moment, deflecting the spinning red blade and sending it bouncing across the beach, melting the sand and leaving shards of cooling glass behind as it went out. The shock on her face quickly turned to anger. “You _dare_ attack me?” she demanded, advancing on Ayeir. Ayeir flinched instinctively, though she didn't dare back up. “You worthless, stupid _child_,” Sayin snarled, and raised a hand.

Ayeir had expected a Force choke, which made the lightning that lanced from Sayin's fingers to Ayeir's body all the worse for surprise. Her scream froze in her throat as her muscles all clenched at once, rebelling, and she fell to her knees.

Then it was over, pain throbbing through every vein and nerve in her body, and Sayin was right in front of her. “You ignorant, foolish, arrogant _child,_” Sayin hissed, and Ayeir cringed back. “After all I've done for you! I took you in when the rest of your family was slaughtered! I raised you as my own child! And now you _betray_ me? You _ingrate!_” Her lightsaber went out, and she struck Ayeir across the face with an open hand, knocking her head to the side with the force of it. Ayeir reflexively caught the yelp of pain and silenced it before it escaped her. “No matter how I try, you're _weak._ All my training, all I've done to help you, and you would throw it away? Because some worthless _Jedi_ batted her eyelashes at you!” She lashed out again.

Ayeir's hand shot up and caught her wrist, stopping her short before she could make contact.

For a moment, both of them stared in breathless, shocked silence.

At last, Ayeir made her voice work again. “I am _not_ weak,” she growled, forcing herself to look Sayin in the eye. “And you didn't raise me as your child.”

Sayin gaped. Ayeir gritted her teeth, planted one foot in the sand, and shoved Sayin backward away from her, making her stumble. “You raised me as your _slave._ Your personal monster, to do your dirty work for you.” She rose to her full height as she spoke, anger boiling up in her blood, snarling down at Sayin. “You tore me apart so you could put me back together the way you wanted me to be! You didn't save my life, you _stole_ it!”

Sayin's anger seared raw and black in the Force, almost overwhelming. Ayeir forbade herself to waver, felt herself shivering anyway even as she thought it. She fought to control her fear, turn it to anger the way she'd been taught, but that was overwhelming too, threatening to swamp her and drag her down until she couldn't breathe. “You're nothing without me,” Sayin sneered, disdain coloring her voice. “I thought I could make something of you. I thought you could be _strong_ for me.” Every sentence was like a punch in the gut, and Ayeir half-cringed before she caught herself. Sayin's lightsaber ignited in her hand, blood-red and hungry. “Clearly I was wrong.”

Ayeir flinched as Sayin struck, raising her hands even though that was useless, weaponless and too unbalanced to call on the Force to stop the blow.

It never connected. Instead there was the discordant hiss of lightsabers connecting, a grunt of effort as Samte lunged between them, crossing her lightsabers and catching Sayin's attack on her blades.

She shoved, the Force sweeping up to aid her, and forced some distance between them and Sayin. “Glad you came around,” she panted.

Ayeir swallowed hard, clamping down on her terror in the moment of respite and _wrenching,_ using the Force to aid her in turning that fear to fury. Instead of speaking she just stretched out a hand, calling her lightsaber back to her, and nodded.

Sayin was skilled, but she was also no fool, and she fell back in a matter of seconds, outnumbered and outmatched. The black rage boiling off her soured into something poison yellow, something Ayeir had never felt from her before.

Fear.

She rallied in the second after Ayeir recognized it, her furious scream ripping through air and Force alike. Ayeir and Samte both braced against it, shielding themselves from the Force-shove that accompanied it.

When Ayeir looked up again, Sayin was already at her ship, vanishing up the ramp. Ayeir let her go, watched dully as the ship's ramp closed and it rose into the air. For a moment she thought Sayin might fire at them with her ship's guns, but instead she fled, though Ayeir made no move to reach Vigilance and pursue her.

A hand touched Ayeir's arm, and she jerked away, heart leaping into her throat. Samte held up her hands – empty now, lightsabers returned to her belt – in a placating gesture. “Hey – it's okay. It's just me.”

Ayeir hissed between her teeth and turned away, pacing a few steps before turning again, restless and aimless and numb all over. “Ayeir,” Samte said gently, then frowned when she didn't get a response and repeated more firmly, “Ayeir.”

“No,” Ayeir snapped, turning away again to pace.

Samte stepped in front of her and she snarled, an almost inhuman sound. Samte didn't flinch. “It's alright,” she said gently.

“It's _not._”

“I know,” Samte ceded. “But it's all right to – to _not_ be all right. I know how hard that must have -”

“_No,_ you _don't!_” Ayeir snarled, throwing her hands out to the sides for emphasis. “You don't know! So stop -” Her voice cracked, and she swallowed hard. Feeling was seeping back into her, a dull ache all through her limbs and a sharp sting where Sayin had slapped her across the face, and she hated it almost as much as she'd hated the numbness. A lump was rising in her throat. She turned away, back toward the house, and tried not to let her voice break as she spoke. “Just – leave me alone.”

She managed to keep a grip on her Force-presence until she was at least out of sight, far enough away up in the trees that if Samte wasn't searching for it, she wouldn't feel the pain. She made her way back up to the house at a broken pace, anxiety driving her to run a few paces before exhaustion forced her back to a staggering walk, before repeating the cycle. By the time she reached the front door, her hands were shaking almost too much to manage the doorknob, and her breath was hiccuping in her chest, vision blurring with tears.

She stumbled across the room and hit the corner of the fireplace hard, then the wall, sliding down to the floor and curling her knees up against her chest. Her face hurt. Her chest hurt. _Everything_ hurt. The wracking sobs shaking her body weren't helping.

_Why did I -?_

_ Why _couldn't_ I -?_

Her foot moved and hit something that clattered against the floor. She raised her head enough to see and stared blankly at the picture frame lying facedown on the floor, trying to understand how it had gotten there. _Oh. I must have, must have knocked it off the... mantle._

Slowly, she reached out and picked it up, fingers shaking so much she almost dropped it again. A fresh crack had split the glass, but it was mostly intact, and the faces beneath were still visible, beaming up at her with a boundless joy she barely remembered. She sobbed again at the sight, running her thumb gently over the glass. _Mama. Papa. Darros, Zana..._

She hugged it to her chest, fingers going white around the edges of the frame. _I've lost everything now. Everything. My family, my home, my master. What am I, without her?_

* * *

Samte let her have almost two hours before she dared go up to the house. To fill the time, she combed the beach for anything Sayin might have dropped or left behind, picking up the irregular shards of glass left behind by lightsabers impacting sand. She cut down a branch and swept the sand, smoothing it over to rid it of the signs of a battle. The local colonists rarely came this far down the coast, but it was possible, and she didn't need anyone asking uncomfortable questions. When she ran out of practical tasks, she sat at the edge of the surf and meditated, trying to quiet her emotions a little and sort them out.

Most of the pangs of fear and pain were leftover residue from the sheer power of Ayeir's emotions as they had rolled over her, and she purged herself of them fairly easily. What was left was mainly worry, and it took her a while to pin down all its sources.

There was the question of where they would go from here. The Jedi Council wouldn't be happy with her when she eventually had to come clean about where she'd been. She just had to hope they would understand.

Sayin was worrying, of course. She was alive, and would be hunting them with a vengeance. And now she knew exactly where they – but then, she'd probably always known exactly where they were, hadn't she? She'd been behind this all along.

And that was maybe the most worrying thing of all. _What about Ayeir?_ What would she do now? Samte had suspected already that Ayeir wasn't being transparent about her goals. It had been too sudden a turning – and Ayeir had been shielding more consistently in the last several weeks, since she rescued (or, pretended to rescue, at least) Samte. Before that, she had rarely hidden her emotions in the Force, as if trying to get a reaction out of Samte by flooding her Force-sense. Samte hadn't given her trust because she believed Ayeir wanted to turn away from the dark side. She'd given that trust in the hopes that by showing Ayeir trust and kindness, completely and honestly, she could convince her to change of her own accord.

And now Ayeir had turned against her master. But somehow Samte still got the feeling this was far from over, even without taking Sayin's penchant for vengeance into account.

She could find no solution, and finally she stood up, brushed the sand off her clothes, and walked up to the house to find Ayeir.

The door was ajar, and she pushed it open with a soft sigh, closing it behind her. The room seemed empty until she nearly tripped over Ayeir when she walked around the coffee table.

Samte sighed and crouched down next to the Sith. Ayeir was curled up on the floor, breathing slow and steady. The handprint where Sayin had slapped her across the face had faded to palest pink, but her crimson makeup was running. She must have been crying for quite a while before falling asleep from sheer exhaustion.

“Come on,” Samte murmured, working her hands under Ayeir's shoulders to pull her up. Ayeir stirred and mumbled incoherent protests. “You can't sleep out here, let's get you to bed.”

Ayeir was too asleep to really protest, and she let Samte support most of her weight and half-carry her to the back bedroom. She settled Ayeir down on a bed and tossed a light blanket over her, then left her to rest.

She nearly stepped on the picture frame, lying on the floor where Ayeir had been curled up. Samte hesitated, glancing at the door to the hall, then picked it up carefully. A crack that she didn't remember being there lanced across the photo, across several of the faces within, but the photo – a real photo on flimsy, not a hologram – had been protected by the glass up to this point, and the colors were almost as bright as they would have been the day it was taken. Five people were pictured – a man, a woman, and three children. Though the man's eyes were bright Sith yellow and the woman's skin showed dark veins betraying dark side corruption, all of them were smiling, seeming genuinely happy. The child who looked to be oldest, a girl maybe eleven or twelve years old, had ashy blonde hair almost as pale as Ayeir's and the same bright hazel eyes as their mother. The boy, clinging to his younger sister's shoulders, had his father's sandy hair and brown eyes Samte had to guess were closer to his father's original color than his mother's hazel. And... Ayeir. The youngest of the three, but still unmistakable, with her mother's white-blonde hair. Her eyes were bright hazel too, not the startling scarlet Samte knew. She was smiling, grinning – not the menacing, wicked leer she liked to unnerve people with these days, but genuine, like she'd been caught mid-laugh as her brother hung on her shoulders.

Samte sighed. _Where is that child now?_

She set the picture back on the mantle carefully, wondering if she could fix the crack in the glass somehow and deciding it was a problem for another day.

Samte half turned at the footsteps in the hall, enough to watch Ayeir step into the room and sit down heavily at the table. She moved slowly, wearily, like she might crack apart at the joints if she moved too fast. Samte turned back to the caf machine and poured another mug full, then carried it and her own cup to the table. She sat and pushed the mug across to Ayeir, along with the sweet and cream.

Ayeir blinked at it for a few seconds before tearing open a packet of sweet and dumping it in. She ignored the cream, but emptied two more packets of sweet into the cup, only finally stirring it in and taking a sip when Samte was starting to worry she would give herself a heart attack.

They drank in silence for several minutes. Ayeir looked exhausted, and she didn't feel much better in the Force. She felt _heavy,_ lacking the fierce energy she usually carried. She stared at the wood grain on the table or into her cup between drinks, not acknowledging Samte's presence, and Samte didn't push her.

At last she spoke, her voice a little rough but steadier than Samte had expected. “I'm not going back to the Jedi.”

Samte sighed. “I expected as much. I can't say I blame you.”

Ayeir looked up then, narrowing her eyes a fraction. “You're not going to try and convince me?”

“Would I be able to?”

Ayeir grunted noncommittally and shrugged her shoulders, looking down again.

“I didn't think so.” Samte set down her cup. “Like I said: I can't say I blame you. The Council wants to put you on trial, and clearly they're not going to be dissuaded.” She paused for a moment. “What _will_ you do?”

Ayeir took a long drink, maybe just to give herself time to think. At last she set her mug down too. “I can't go back to – to _her._ Even if I wanted to. She'll want me dead.” She shivered slightly, but continued. “But there are people who will support me. Some of her people. Some others.” She rubbed her forehead. “I have Vigilance. I have a fortress, if I get there before her and stake my claim. I have allies, and I can find more. She has a lot of enemies who would be glad for another saber working to bring her down.”

Samte nodded. She still wasn't an expert in Sith politics, but she'd gleaned enough of an understanding from what Ayeir had told her to know that was true of almost any Sith who gained enough power. “You think you can build a power base strong enough to stand against her?”

Ayeir pursed her lips and took another sip of caf. “I can. I'm strong enough.”

Samte smiled slightly. “I know you are.”

Ayeir's brow furrowed, and she ran her fingernails across the wood grain of the table. “Why are you still here?” she asked bluntly. “Why are you helping me? I'm Sith. And now you know that isn't changing.”

“I already knew that,” Samte said quietly. “Or, at least, I suspected. I'm not as easily fooled as you think.” She sighed, interlocking her fingers around her cup where it sat on the table. “Can we just... try to be honest with each other, from now on?”

Ayeir gave a low laugh. “You say that like we're going to keep talking to each other.”

“I'd like to,” Samte said, soft and even.

Ayeir scoffed. “We're on opposite sides of an oncoming war, Samte. Sith and Jedi aren't friends.”

“Maybe not usually,” Samte agreed. “But I know you. And I know that as hard as you try to deny it, there is good in you.”

“You don't know anything about me.”

The words were quiet, spoken more into her caf than to Samte, and Samte pursed her lips before replying. “I know you were a child who lost her family too soon. I know you were raised by a woman who manipulated you and abused you. I know you've grown up constantly told that the only way to be worth anything was to be strong, and the only way to be strong was to be a killer.” She reached across the table and laid her hand against Ayeir's. “I know you could have killed me yesterday, and you chose not to.”

Ayeir stared at their hands, together on the table, but she didn't pull back. After a long moment she sighed. “Yeah. I guess I did.” She rubbed her eyes. “You really think we can keep doing this?”

“I think we're both smart enough to make it work.” She smiled again, trying to be reassuring. “I know it's not...”

“Normal?”

“I was going to say _expected,_ but yes, that works. But... there's war brewing, you said it yourself. Maybe we can both make things better, if we just have a little extra perspective.”

Ayeir eyed her, calculating, and Samte let her. She didn't even protest when she felt Ayeir's weary Force-presence touch the edges of her mind, reading what she was letting past her shields. At last the Sith woman sighed and withdrew quietly. “If we're laying all our cards on the table... I don't want to stop talking to you either.” Samte blinked at the honesty, but didn't speak. “You're honest. Which is more than most Sith can say. And you're... you're _kind, _which is more than _any_ Sith can say.” She shrugged one shoulder. “It's a nice change of pace.”

“So let's keep in touch,” Samte offered. “We'll use a private frequency, so no one else will hear our transmissions.” She smiled, a little more confident this time.

Ayeir huffed softly, but she smiled a little too. “All right, Jedi. You win this one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: this is one of the oldest chapters in this fic in terms of the order I actually wrote scenes in. It's also one of my favorites.
> 
> Amusing scene titles from production:  
\- _vindicATION!_  
\- Trauma! at the Disco  
\- Can We All Stop Lying To Each Other Now? K Thx
> 
> Is Samte genuine about the idea of "having a contact on the other side means we might be able to orchestrate this war into not starting," or is she just using it as an excuse? Who knows. What do you think?
> 
> To no one's surprise, the next chapter is another montage chapter similar to the last one. Also to no one's surprise, it's going to be a while because I still have to write most of it out. Sorry about that. In the meantime, fresh art is going up on stars-hearts-and-laser-swords.tumblr.com for your enjoyment! Thanks for reading!


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